Flash floods in southern Russia kill 103

Severe flash floods and a landslide in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region have killed at least 103 people and affected nearly 13,000 in the area's worst natural disaster in decades, officials said Saturday. President Vladimir Putin was expected to personally inspect the worst-hit areas as officials feared the death toll could go up even further. “He will be there soon,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told AFP. Residents were caught completely by surprise by the force of the waters, which ripped up paving and traffic lights, flooded the ground floors of houses, railways and roads, witnesses and officials said. One woman reportedly had to spend a night up a tree before being rescued from the floods caused by what officials said were exceptionally heavy rainstorms. In the district of Krymsk, an area worst hit by the disaster, officials had already discovered 92 bodies including that of a 10-year-old, a police spokesman told AFP. The town of Krymsk is located around 200 kilometers northwest of the Black Sea resort town of Sochi where Russia is gearing up to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2014. Officials have not been able to explain the large number of deaths, except by saying that the water swelled in the local Bakanka river and the disaster struck while Krymsk residents were asleep “Everything happened at night and very quickly,” the regional administration said in a statement. Police declined to speculate on the reasons behind the massive toll, saying Moscow-based investigators were conducting a probe. The Russian Internet was abuzz with speculation that people died in a man-made catastrophe resulting from an open sluice gate at a water reservoir. Authorities denied the reports. “Unfortunately, the rumor mills works much faster than the official information,” a spokeswoman for the regional governor, Anna Minkova, said on popular Echo of Moscow radio. “No water reservoir, no gate has been opened,” she said, adding that the district did not have a reservoir that might have caused the flooding. Nine people were reported killed in the popular Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik and another two in the port of Novorossiisk over the past two days, police said. The victims included two woman and three men electrocuted in Gelendzhik on Friday. The authorities said they had to switch off power in the worst-affected areas to avoid more deaths. Tatyana, a resident of Krymsk whose house, perched on a hill, was not affected by the floods, said the disaster struck unexpectedly. “The water rose very quickly,” she told AFP by phone, declining to give her last name. “It flooded people’s ground floors in five to 10 minutes, ripped out pavement kerbs and even pieces of asphalt,” she said. Local people had received no warning from the emergency services, she added. “Many elderly people must have been asleep and probably died,” she said. “In the morning, there were boats on the neighboring street. A woman spent the night in a tree and then was rescued.” The resort town of Gelendzhik received five months’ worth of rain in 24 hours, the regional administration said. Novorossiisk, Russia’s largest port on the Black Sea, received two month’s worth of rain in 24 hours. A team had worked through the night to bring the situation under control in the port, port spokesman Mikhail Sidorov said. “In some places the water level reached 1.5 meters (five feet),” he told AFP. The floods and a landslide had affected the port’s operations and pipeline operator Transneft had informed management that it would halt shipments of crude oil, he added. Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev said he had spoken by phone to both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and pledged everything would be done to help those affected by the floods. “Of course, it came as a shock to us,” he said. “We’ve never had this before.” In remarks broadcast on television, he expressed the hope that residents would not resort to looting. e text