Over 300 homes in the Russian city of Orenburg were submerged after the Ural River rose half a meter beyond its bursting point, according to official reports on Wednesday.
The quickly melting snow from the Ural Mountains had set off the worst flooding in decades.
The barrage of meltwater had overwhelmed swathes of the Ural Mountains, western Siberia and some areas of Kazakhstan near the rivers such as the Ural and Tobol, forcing the country’s ministry to give an order for the evacuation of over 100,000 people by Wednesday evening.
Authorities have reported that the situation was dangerous at Orenburg, where the water levels in the Ural River (Europe’s third-longest) had surged 50 centimetres (20 inches) by early Wednesday, just hours after hitting the critical level of 9.3 metres (30 feet) on Tuesday evening.
Hydrologists have predicted an even worse situation for Orenburg, a city of around 550,000 people. The Ural River, which flows through Russia and Kazakhstan and into the Caspian, may increase a further 70 cm (28 inches) by Thursday Hydrologists had warned.
The Ural River burst through a dam embankment in the city of Orsk in Orenburg region, of which Orenburg is the administrative centre, at the weekend.
In Kurgan, a city on the Tobol River in the south of the Urals, regional officials have said that the floodwaters would continue to rise for three days and they had augured a “difficult situation” until the end of April.
