Russia flood: Thousands evacuated from homes as Ural river water levels continue to rise | BBC News

Hello and welcome to Verifi Live. We begin with

flood

s described as the worst in almost 100 years in Russia and Kazakhstan. Thousands of people have been forced to leave their hometowns under threat of ongoing evacuations, while

flood

ing in the Urals and western Siberia has been caused by unusually warm temperatures. that has melted the snow in the Russian city of Orenberg, where half a million people live. The authority said

water

levels

had reached dangerous

levels

. Thousands of people have already left the city. Orenberg is downstream from the town of Os, which was flooded when a dam broke last time. week, well let's go straight to Moscow and straight to our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg and Steve, just give me an idea of ​​the scale of this, first of all, the first thing I have to say is that spring floods are common in Russia um, during the winter.

It turns into spring and the snow melts, we see flooding, but nothing on this scale, I mean, and it's beyond Russia, just as you mentioned Kazakhstan, 97,000 people have been

evacuated

from the flood zone in Kazakhstan. As for Russia, more than 12,000 people have been

evacuated

. from their

homes

uh you mentioned orenberg I think over 7,000 people have been evacuated from orenberg and the boats have been uh uh sailing around the city there um Sirens howling uh people being asked to leave their

homes

in different districts uh of the city, so the scale is quite large and there is also an economic consequence here.

As far as we know, casualty numbers are low at this time. I've heard that maybe four or five people have died in the last few days. This flood, but it is a flood that has affected many communities, many settlements in the area of ​​the Ural Mountains M and Western Siberia. We are seeing aerial photographs of the enormous amount of territory that this flood is actually hitting and impacting. Are

water

levels still rising? Tell me about the amount of help people are receiving on the ground. Water levels, as far as we know, are still rising. In Orenburg.

And in fact. President Putin's spokesman De Pesov today said that the situation was expected to worsen in other places, water levels have fallen, for example in the city of Ork that you mentioned, it was quite interesting a few days ago, a crowd Angrily she gathered in Ork to vent her fury against the local officials. About the regional governor of Orenberg, about the local mayor, who they believe did not warn them in time that this flood was coming, they also criticized the Minister of Russia for emergency situations, they did not criticize the Kremlin, which is quite interesting, in They were actually singing.

Putin help us Putin help us like he knows that the president sitting in the Kremlin in Moscow has products according to the Russian tradition, some that they believe could help solve their problems, give them compensation, improve things exactly at that point. Vladimir Putin, has he said anything about this directly? We see him so expressive in international affairs, the operation in Ukraine, what about something like this at the national level, with people asking him to intervene? Have we heard from you? So the official message from the Kremlin is that Vladimir Putin is fully informed of this, they are keeping him informed, he is dealing with the situation, coordinating the situation, um, we haven't seen that yet, we haven't seen the photos of this and we haven't There is no suggestion at this time that Vladimir.

Putin is going to visit the flood zone, right now the message is getting out that the president is in full control of the situation, but we haven't actually seen evidence that Steve Rosenberg lives there in Moscow, thank you. thank you very much for that