Dam collapse (Implosion) in Kazakh floods, scores killed
13 March 2010
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1213687/Dam-collapse-in-Kazakh-floods,-scores-killed
At least 30 people were killed and thousands evacuated from their homes
in southern Kazakhstan Friday when two burst dams unleashed massive
flooding, officials said. Flood waters from rivers swollen by unusually
heavy winter snowfalls and an early spring spilled over the walls of a
dam in the southern Aksuisky district and washed away a second in the
nearby Karatalsky district. By Friday evening 30 corpses had been
brought into the morgue of the region hit by the disaster, a source at
the morgue told the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, raising an earlier
death toll of 25. More than 2,500 people have been affected by the
flooding, Almaty regional government spokesman Ilyas Biyakhmetov said,
adding that at least 60 homes were destroyed. Prime Minister Karim
Masimov arrived in the region to survey the damage, Biyakhmetov said.
He warned that the toll would likely rise and investigation into the
causes of the disaster was continuing. Last minute exodus as dam
overflows In the regional capital Taldykorgan, evacuees described the
last-minute exodus from the village of Kyzyl-Agash as the flood waters
began to spill over the dam.
"Our neighbours came and told us to drop everything and run, that the
water was about to breach the dam. This was at eight o'clock in the
evening," said Razbek Alakkan, wiping tears.
"So we abandoned our farm and left. All of our cattle died, but thank
God we are alive," he added. In the second incident in Karatalsky,
officials said that an entire dam was washed away, forcing the
evacuation of a village of 820 people, most of whom have taken shelter
in a school. The deluge had also brought down a bridge on a main
highway connecting the capital Almaty with the northern city of
Ust-Kamenogorsk near the border with Russia, the Emergency Situations
Ministry said. Around 300 rescue workers have been sent to the scene,
it said. Flooding is common in Kazakhstan, a mountainous nation which
borders Russia and China. In a separate incident, the remains of an air
ambulance helicopter carrying two medics and a 17-year-old teenager
suffering from appendicitis, along with two district officials, were
found in the north of the country on Friday. Contact was lost with the
helicopter shortly after it took off from the village of Makanchi on
Thursday. "We have confirmed that the helicopter has been found and
that all eight people are dead," a ministry spokeswoman told AFP on the
condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak with the
press.
The wealthiest of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia,
Kazakhstan has struggled to maintain its ageing infrastructure and has
been hit by a series of disasters in recent years as a result.
Thirty-eight people were killed last year when a drugs treatment
facility caught fire in Taldykorgan, and a warehouse fire in the
capital Astana killed at least 16."