Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Monday a national day of mourning in the wake of devastating, raging floodwaters that tore through streets in the southern part of the country and killed more than 170 people, Russian media reported.
The floods that washed through southern Russia and killed 171 people followed storms that dumped five months of rain in a matter of hours. Still, President Vladimir Putin has spent three days trying to persuade residents that the flooding was an act of nature and not the result of government negligence or worse.
The town of Krymsk, home to around 57,000 people, was worst hit, with residents describing how a five-metre (16ft) wave swept through homes in the middle of the night, turning the town into a mudbath. Unlike the dozens of other tragedies that hit Russia every year – from aeroplane crashes to uncontrollable forest fires – anger with Putin's regime was immediate and widespread.
Putin arrived Saturday evening and viewed the damage from the air. Television footage of Krymsk shot from Putin's helicopter showed the city of 57,000 people partially submerged in muddy water. The city stadium looked more like a lake.
Heavy rain also fell in Gelendzhik, a popular seaside vacation spot about 200 kilometers (120 miles) up the coast from Sochi, where preparations are under way for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Novorossiisk, a major Black Sea port, also was affected.
Some persist in believing, against all evidence, that the city of Krymsk and its 57,000 people were intentionally sacrificed to prevent the flood waters from damaging Novorossiysk, a major Black Sea port essential for exporting Russian oil and grain.
Residents said that even though officials admitted they knew a dangerous flood was coming, they had issued no warning or evacuation order.
"If we had been warned, people could have been saved," said Irina Loskutova, 50, standing in a muddy square near the central market, hoping to gather clothes and food as the city settled into a third night with no electricity. "They knew and they didn't tell us."
Russian TV showed thousands of houses in the region almost completely submerged and police said many of the victims were elderly people who had been asleep at the time.
"Our house was flooded to the ceiling," Krymsk pensioner Lidiya Polinina told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
"We broke the window to climb out. I put my five-year-old grandson on the roof of our submerged car, and then we somehow climbed up into the attic."
Dozens of people are reportedly missing, and there are fears that the death toll will rise further. Emergency teams have been sent from Moscow by plane and helicopter. Crude oil shipments from Novorossiysk have been suspended.
People waded through waist-high water or manoeuvred the streets in boats. About 5,000 residences were flooded, the Krasnodar governor was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency. "Nobody remembers such a flood in all (of the area's) history," Alexander Tkachev said.
"People just ran from their homes because there was a huge wall of water," one woman told the Russian News Service, a Moscow-based radio station.
In addition to the dead, another 320 people sought medical assistance -- 104 of whom required hospitalization -- the emergencies ministry reported, according to state-run RIA Novosti.
One driver, according to the English-language Russian news channel RT, said his truck was pushed tens of meters by floodwaters, while the force of the floodwaters ripped a 10-year-old girl her mother's arms.
Five people in the seaside resort town of Gelendzhik were electrocuted after power lines collapsed into the water. RT, citing witnesses, said a man trying to cross a large puddle was initially electrocuted, and then four others who tried to come to his aid were then killed by the live electrical current.
Those not harmed, but living in the flood-ravaged area, still face plenty of challenges such as no electricity, a disrupted water supply, damaged roads and faulty communication. RIA Novosti reported more than 5,000 homes were flooded, while Itar-Tass said 254 had been destroyed.
"The scale of it is spectacular, to be sure, and very tragic. The water came with such force that it tore up the asphalt," Krasnodar Gov. Alexander Tkachov said via Twitter after seeing pictures from Krymsk, according to RT.
A spokesman for the prosecutor general's investigative committee said the reservoir was not involved in the intense flooding. Local prosecutors earlier admitted the gates had been opened, but it was too early to say if that caused the flooding. Nearby towns were untouched.
As the town's morgues began to fill, refrigerated trucks were parked on the streets outside a nearby hospital to contain the bodies of the dead. Residents are convinced the final toll will reach into many hundreds.
"We'll know how many it really is when the funerals start," said Volodya Lugovoi, 58, sitting on a porch by the city's main stadium, now a vast pool whose pitch is dotted with floating cars.
After torrential rains dropped up to 300 milliliters (12 inches) of water late Friday and early Saturday, the flooding inundated Krymsk so quickly that that residents said they suspected that water had been intentionally released from a reservoir in the mountains above the city to prevent the dam from being breached.
The suspicion was that this had been done to protect the Novorossiysk port, which is part-owned by the government and Transneft, the state monopoly that runs the oil pipeline system. The reservoir lies in mountains situated between Novorossiysk and Krymsk. It was unclear whether the port was in any danger.
The government denied the sluices had been opened and, in an effort to convince the skeptics, the Krasnodar region governor arranged for a group of residents to fly over the reservoir in a helicopter. He even arranged a second flight over a wider area after they complained that they had not seen enough the first time. Two members of the group were shown on television saying they were now convinced that the reservoir had not been the source of the flooding.
This was the same conclusion reached by a well-known local environmentalist, Suren Gazaryan, who has opposed the governor on other issues. Gazaryan studied the area around the reservoir and the high-water marks along a network of mountain streams, posting the photographs and his conclusions on his blog.
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