Recorded by Svetlana Prokudina, 11.04.2024

ORENBURG REGION

Photo: Nina Avdeyeva / Photo from the personal archive

“People cope on their own, without relying on the authorities.” A story from a Yabloko member about how life is in Orsk after the flood

On the evening of 5 April, emergency reports appeared that a dam broke in the city of Orsk, the Orenburg Region, and that the evacuation of residents began. On 6 April, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case on negligence and violation of safety rules during construction work. Water began to enter neighbouring areas, including the capital of the region, Orenburg. The head of the Yabloko party branch in the village of Novaya Biofabrika (Orsk), Nina Avdeyeva, told us about the situation in the city on 10 April:

The water has subsided, and this is very noticeable. But today I walked to work because there is no public transport in our area. I walked past the cemetery, where until recently all the crosses were under water. Now the water is about half gone, I think about a meter and a half. Where there is still water, people move on boats; where the water has receded, they wear boots. Buses are not running because the bridge that connects the Old Town and the New Town is flooded. I live in the Old Biofactory area, there are private houses there, and the water also reached there. To prevent the water from flowing further, people filled bags with rubble and blocked passages where it could break through.

There is no panic, of course. People are trying to fight this. They created chats, communicate with each other, tell the latest news, that is, help each other as best they can. My friends live with my other friends. I took a family from Orsk to live in my house. They were not flooded, but water, electricity, and gas were turned off in the house. Where should they go with five children? I took them to mu house. Electricity switched off regularly, but we have water and gas, thank God. Volunteers brought us water. Just now my replacement colleague came and said that some people came and distributed food, and everyone there almost killed each other there. But there is no shortage of food-stuffs in the stores that were not flooded.

Photo: The streets of Orsk. / Photo by Nina Avdeyeva

Problem number 1 now is, certainly, that many people simply do not have any housing left. For example, my in-law’s house completely drowned. The most scarce thing is drinking water. I have ten people living with me now. To drink tea, we need six liters of water. We use twenty liters of water per day purely for drinking and rinsing our mouths. Some people have wells from which they can get water, but we don’t have one. But people write in chats: come and take water dial, we put a hosepipe from our well on the street. What I would like to say about the people. There are a lot of volunteers. I never even thought about my son-in-law that he could be a volunteer. Now he spends his days carrying someone on a boat and delivering water. And a lot of people do that. There are many announcements saying that if anyone needs water delivered, please provide the addresses, here is the phone number.

You see, people try to cope with the situation on their own, without relying on the authorities. They try to help each other as much as possible. That’s what’s valuable. It may be boiling inside, but now people are trying to survive.

When people came out to the square in front of the administration, there was a surge of emotions and despair. It turned out that this dam could have been dug long ago, and perhaps the city would not have drowned. And you locked us in a “bottle”. Why did you do this? This suggests that the authorities are not in their place. Now they promise a lot. But no one from my circle has received any compensation so far. You need to go to the Multifunctional Public Services Centre and fill out some documents there.

Previously, our population was 264,000. But young people are leaving, and now there are about 160,000 residents left. The city is provincial, patriarchal, divided into two parts: the old and the new, and very large in area. The Urals divide it into two parts, the European and the Asian part. The Old City is located in Asia, there are one-story buildings there, and the New City is in Europe.

The dam was built in 2010. It was originally built incorrectly, and people were already indignant. They simply poured soil at a level of five meters. What does this mean for the Urals when the river discharges water every year? We have the Irikla (the Iriklinsk reservoir on the Ural River) – one should understand what he is doing. In our area, the Ural and the Or rivers overflow considerably every four years. Although they are narrow, they are like in a stone bag, they have mountains on both sides.

We are sitting “downstairs”, we don’t know anything. But those “on top” [the authorities] saw it. Why didn’t they start shedding water from the Irikla earlier? Why did they wait until 2,000 cubic meters per day? They saw that the water was rising. Only after the people rioted did they dig a dam and let the water flow into the field. What did they do before that? In Soviet times, they started dumping Irikla very early. The peak always falls on 14-16 April. This is 100% the fault of the city leadership. What kind of rodents [who, according to their reports, damaged the dam] are to blame there?

I have lived here for a long time, such disgrace has never happened before. They began to take people out only when all the houses were practically submerged under water. Kozupitsa (Mayor of Orsk Vasily Kozupitsa) drove along the dam on 4 April and said that everything was fine. And he didn’t say then that the rodents had chewed something there. The most important thing is that the water seems to be quiet, as if it is not moving, but it is advancing, and this is very scary.

Photo: The streets of Orsk. / Photo by Nina Avdeyeva

The governor said beautifully when he met with the initiative group that they would disinfect the entire land, that they would go through all the houses. Can you imagine how many houses they will have to go through? They will fall off their feet. It’s a whole city. The Mayka district is flooded, the Old Town is flooded, the Nikel district is flooded. All gardens and vegetable gardens are flooded. I am even afraid that we might be in danger of starvation. Maybe the country won’t let us die, but it’s still alarming. The water even reached the New City, where it had never reached. They promise to do everything in six months. Where will people live these six months? Now, there are certainly many temporary accommodation centres. Almost all schools that are not flooded operate as temporary accommodation centres. But you are in shock when you read that diapers or mattresses are needed for bedridden people. People, however, immediately respond and bring what they can.

Your Kurenkov (Head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Alexander Kurenkov) arrived, and they met for three days. I looked at him, and it seemed to me that he didn’t even understand where he was when he was flying here in a helicopter. Some city of Orsk… He had such a lost face.

We are Russians. We are not learning lessons; everything will remain the same for us. The dam must be built wisely. Build and not to steal. But in four years everything will be exactly the same.

We no longer elect the mayor of the city, this time he was appointed (in 2019), and each subsequent mayor is worse than the previous one. The present one is no longer trying to do anything at all. At first he was indignant at what was happening in the city, and then he stopped communicating with people at all. There are no sensible leaders now. Only grabbers are striving for power. Even ten years ago it was so that you could go to any specialist in the White House, as we call our administration, and ask something. Now they have closed themselves off from people, put two “barracudas” there [who do not let people in], hung a large shield, next to it there is a telephone that you can call, and maybe someone will come to you. But they won’t let you go further than the entrance. They cut themselves off from people completely.

The Orenburg branch of Yabloko opened an Aid Centre for flood victims.

Anyone can take part in the collection of humanitarian aid and bring food-stuffs, basic necessities, clothes and medicine to the Aid Centre at the address of the Yabloko party office in Orenburg: Orenburg, Krasnoznamenaya 28 from 15:00 to 19:00 daily or agree on other time slot convenient for you.

If it is inconvenient for you to get to the party office, Yabloko members can come to you and pick up food-stuffs and things for the Centre. To do this, you need to contact our Orenburg office by phone.

If you yourself find yourself in a difficult situation and need help, you can contact us by phone (or you can also write WhatsApp, Viber, or Telegram).