Fifteen people confirmed to have died in Russia’s Orenburg region during last year’s flooding

Almost a year after multiple regions experienced their worst flooding in decades, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry has disclosed that 15 people died in last year’s catastrophic flooding in the Orenburg region in Russia’s Urals, investigative outlet Verstka reported on Tuesday.

In its annual report on emergency situations handled by the ministry in the previous year, the Emergency Situations Ministry said that 15 people had died in last April’s flooding in total, adding that 311,000 people had been affected by it and 17,800 people had to be evacuated from their homes. Altogether, over 32,000 houses in 286 villages and 195 dacha settlements were flooded.

Torrential rains across Russia’s Urals, southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan caused the devastating flooding in April 2024, leaving dozens of towns and villages under water, including the two largest cities in the Orenburg region, Orenburg and Orsk.

Disaster first struck when a dam in Orsk burst and collapsed, flooding much of the city. Within days, a second dam in the nearby town of Novotroitsk was also breached, leading to a state of emergency being declared across the region.

Although independent media outlet IStories reported on five victims of the flooding in the early days of the disaster, Orenburg region Governor Denis Pasler and Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov denied that the flooding had caused any loss of life at the time.