You're reading: Russia mourns floods victims, Putin faces awkward questions

KRYMSK - Russia began a day of mourning on Monday for the 171 people killed in floods that drove thousands from their homes, with the causes of the disaster posing hard questions for the authorities, including President Vladimir Putin.

Most of the victims were in the southern Russian town of
Krymsk near the Black Sea, many of them caught unawares and
without any unofficial warning when the floods and landslides
began on Friday night.

Postmen in the badly damaged town of 57,000 people went from
house to house on Monday, handing out sums of 10,000 roubles
($300), with the promise of more compensation to come. Many
people were salvaging what they could from their sodden homes.

“Nothing is left. We are like tramps,” said Ovsen Torosyan,
30. “I bought all the furniture and electrical goods on credit
and still have to finish paying for them but they have all
gone.”

The floods followed more than a month of heavy rainfall in
the relatively wealthy southern “breadbasket” region of
Krasnodar, where agriculture and tourism thrive.

Officials, who raised the death toll to 171 late on Sunday,
were expecting more rains in the Krasnodar region on Monday
although it was sunny in Rymsky.

Torrential rain, equivalent to a third of the annual average
rainfall in some places, temporarily paralysed transport and
briefly halted exports from the port of Novorossiisk, Russia’s
biggest commercial port.

The port was returning to normal operations, and the railway
was operating normally again for passenger traffic, but the
scale of the destruction in Krymsk was shocking.

PUTIN TRIES TO STEM CRITICISM

Residents said the floods upended trees and drowned
livestock, lifting the carcasses and carrying them on the waters
rushing through city streets. Officials said they were
collecting animal corpses and destroying them to prevent disease
from spreading in the aftermath of the floods.

Pensioners struggling to save what they could from the
wreckage of their homes posed the same question: How could a
rainstorm, even such an intense one, wreak so much destruction
in a single night?

Putin, who faced criticism early in his first term as
president for reacting slowly to deadly disasters, promptly flew
to Krymsk on Saturday and grilled local authorities on
residents’ lack of warning of the impending disaster.

He demanded detailed information on the potential for a
sudden release of water from a nearby reservoir, seen by Krymsk
residents as the most likely cause of a wall of water which came
crashing down on their homes in the early hours of Saturday.
Putin appeared satisfied with local officials’ rejection of that
notion.

Investigators were told to check the failure of
early-warning procedures but said a release of water from the
Neberdzhayevskoye reservoir could not have caused the flood.

Social media contained criticism of the state media coverage
which focused as much on his visit to Krymsk as on the human
suffering caused by the floods.

“The news on Channel One: The floods happened, Putin arrives
in Krymsk, Putin flies in a helicopter, Putin arrives somewhere
else, Putin has a meeting. Putin…,” said a tweet by a Russian
identified only as Dalia Roshina.

It was the first major disaster in Russia since Putin
returned to the Kremlin for a third term as president after a
four-year interlude as prime minister.

The former KGB spy, now 59, has increasingly struggled to
project his customary image of mastery since the outbreak of
protests against his rule last December.
In his 12 years in power, as president and prime minister,
Russia has been plagued by natural and man-made disasters that
have laid bare a longstanding shortfall in investment and
management of Russia’s transport and infrastructure.