Russia’s regional and federal governments will allocate almost 9 billion rubles ($280 million) to restore the southern town of Krymsk severally damaged by devastating floods, the Krasnodar Region administration said in a statement posted on its website on Sunday.
“We’ll restore the town, social facilities and infrastructure. We’ll be building a new neighborhood with a school and a hospital. A total of 9 billion rubles have been allocated from the federal and regional budgets for restoring the town of Krymsk,” the administration quoted Krasnodar Region Governor Alexander Tkachyov as saying during his meeting with local residents.
The floods, which hit three cities in south Russia on July 7, killed 171 people and flooded 7,000 homes, causing massive damage to the gas, electricity and water supplies and road and rail links. Most of the deaths occurred in the town of Krymsk.
More than 1,300 houses in Krymsk were damaged by the floods.
The disaster, caused by torrential rains flooding the mountain rivers, caught many locals unaware, especially in Krymsk, which accounted for the most deaths and property damage.
Many residents claimed they never received any storm warning. District authorities said they launched a news ticker on local television and sent out mass text messages, but the power was out before the flood, shutting off TV sets, and the text messages mostly arrived too late and in truncated form.
