Devastating flooding across much of the Orenburg region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan is continuing to cause enormous damage and disruption, even as the water level in the worst affected city continued to go down on Saturday.
Despite flood waters in the region’s second city of Orsk receding further overnight, the level of the Ural River in the regional capital Orenburg had risen by a further 54 cm on Saturday afternoon, reaching a height of 11.8 meters, according to the city authorities.
“We calculate that this is the plateau: there will be no more rise, the situation will stabilise, and the water level will go down," Orenburg Governor Denis Pasler said on Telegram on Saturday morning, though the water levels in the city did in fact continue to rise in the hours that followed.