KRYMSK, Russia (Reuters) – The Russian government accused local authorities yesterday of mishandling floods that killed 171 people near the Black Sea, hoping to deflect public anger over the high death toll and devastation from President Vladimir Putin.
The head of the Krymsk district, which bore the brunt of the damage at the weekend when a wall of water flooded homes and streets, lost his job hours after Russia’s emergencies minister blamed officials on the ground for being slow to issue warnings.
Putin himself was shown on television in the Kremlin sternly demanding his subordinates report back to him by the end of the week on how the relief effort was going.
“We must help these families, help all the people who are in very difficult circumstances and have lost almost all their belongings,” said Putin, anxious to appear in control after being accused of reacting too slowly to national disasters when he first rose to power in 2000.
In Krymsk, a town of 57,000 between the regional capital Krasnodar and the large port of Novorossiisk, people complained they had been let down by their leaders as they buried the victims, many of whom were sleeping when the flooding began.
“The old man woke up, managed to get out of the house but the water carried him away. We found his body the next day without any clothes on,” said Igor Markozov, 52, as he buried his 92-year-old father Valentin.
Another victim, 82-year-old Anna Dudnik, survived floods a decade ago but the water then reached only up to her waist. This time it reached the ceiling of her home.
“Her cat lived with her and her dog was tied up. They drowned together. The flooding hadn’t been expected. There was no chance of survival,” said 81-year-old Melaniya Usenko, standing at her sister’s freshly dug grave.
Others salvaged what they could from their shattered homes and, two days after Putin flew in to view the damage and grill officials on their actions, postal workers went from house to house making initial $300 compensation payments.
Relatives had earlier lined up to identify bodies stored in a refrigerated truck behind a local hospital at the start of a national day of mourning. Clean-up crews destroyed rotting carcasses of livestock drowned in the floods.
