Billions in damages from floods in Kazakhstan

The damage caused by the spring floods in Kazakhstan amounts to billions of tenge, Tengrinews reports citing Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Bozhko.

"The damage to date is being calculated. It is very large, practically billions of tenge. The budget request from Akmola Oblast is being readied. Pavlodar Oblast asks for 800 million. 800 million is requested to eliminate the consequences in East Kazakhstan Oblast, somewhere around 8-9 billion will be needed in Karaganda Oblast and about the same amount in Akmola Oblast. The estimates are not complete yet, expenditures on restoring electricity and communications have not been counted yet," he said at the briefing in the Central Communications Service's headquarters in Astana on May 26.

He noted that the scape of the floods and the areas they affected this spring were unprecedented in Kazakhstan.

"According to international experts, the floods in Kazakhstan, along with other major disasters of that month, including the earthquake in Nepal, forest fires in Siberia, typhoons in Japan, were put on the list of major disasters in the world because of the large number of evacuees and affected people,” Deputy Interior Minister said.

Talking about the scale of the disaster he said that the amount of water in the Nura River and Sherubai-Nur River exceeded the normal amount by five times. He also spoke about Preobrazhensky hydroelectric complex, where the normal water flow equals 3.5 cubic meters per second, but reached 2,345 cubic meters per second on April 18.

He also cited figures from Astana dam, which was created in 2010 to protect the capital from flood waters of the river Ishim. According to him, flood waters were intercepted there three times. In the first year after its construction, 40 million cubic meters of water were intercepted, then 110 million cubic meters of water. This year, the dam intercepted 193 million cubic meters of water. "This is a very large amount," Bozhko said.

According to him, a total of 88 settlements in 26 regions and seven cities in five Oblasts of Kazakhstan suffered from the flooding. In addition, 243 road sections were eroded by the spring floods  and 20 bridges were washed away.

Almost 18,000 people had been evacuated before the flood water reached their areas. 43,000 heads of cattle were moved to elevated areas. A total of 3.2 million cubic meters of melt water was pumped away from houses.

3,067 houses were flooded, 198 of them were destroyed (because they were made of adobe). 626 houses will be demolished (of which 93 have already been demolished). 70 sites have been prepared for construction of new houses, and construction works have started at 16 of them.

"The situation is returning back to normal, only 12 houses in Akmola Oblast are flooded (in Orazak village), 17,213 people have returned to their places of residence," the deputy head of the Interior Ministry said.

Reporting by Aidana Yussupova, writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina