Cherson:
As flooding reached rooftops, rescuers rushed to save people in Kherson as water from the destroyed Kakhovka dam flooded the southern Ukrainian city.
“We don’t have a house anymore. You can’t even see the roof,” says 46-year-old Dmytro Melnikov, who escaped from his flooded home with his five children.
The whole neighborhood is now under water. It is above the level of the ground floor,” he said, holding his daughter’s hand.
Rescuers used small boats and amphibious vehicles to reach stranded locals, some of whom had to flee with little more than their passports.
The Dnipro River flowing through Kherson has risen by more than five meters since the dam was destroyed upstream on Tuesday, and official expectations were that it would continue to rise throughout Wednesday.
Laura Musiyan, of the Kherson Hydrometeorological Center, had bloody knuckles and scratched feet from falling into an open sewer when measuring the water level.
“Many people are not evacuating because they hope the water will recede soon. But so far there is no good news,” she said.
– ‘True Nightmare’ –
Some locals had to take their lives into their own hands by swimming through the water, and one man paddled to safety on an inflatable mattress.
Nataliya Korzh, 68, told how she had to swim part of the way to escape from her home, her legs covered in scratches, her hands shaking from the cold.
“All my rooms are flooded. My refrigerator floats, the freezer, cabinets, everything,” she said.
“To get to the room where the dogs were, I would have had to dive. I don’t know what happened to them,” she said as she got out of a dinghy, helped by two rescuers, barefoot and wearing a wet coat . top and jogging bottoms.
She couldn’t save her cat either.
The rescuers – a combination of police officers, emergency services and troops – lifted people and dogs out of dinghies onto dry land and quickly set off to rescue more stranded residents.
“The boys came to pick me up. My son called them,” Nataliya said, carrying her meds and a few bags of stuff.
“We are used to shooting, but a natural disaster is a real nightmare,” she added.
– ‘Danger’ everywhere –
Rescue teams were constantly carrying people, mostly children and the elderly and their pets, through the tree-lined streets. Others had to fend for themselves and waded through the water.
“Local residents send us geolocations where possible and we pick them up and their pets,” said Sergiy, a 38-year-old police officer who is helping coordinate the rescue efforts.
Svitlana Abramovych, 56, organized the rescue of 22 residents still trapped in her five-story apartment building, the ground floor of which is flooded.
“The water started coming last night and after 6pm it flooded the building and garden. The water came in through the front doors and into the ground floor apartments,” she said.
Some residents waved and smiled when they were relatively safe, but others trembled and cried.
They hardly reacted to the sound of an air raid siren and artillery in the distance. Kherson has come under heavy fire since Russia withdrew from the city in November after annexing it just two months earlier.
“Now they are shooting and at night something hit this neighborhood. There is the water, here are the explosions,” Svitlana said, pointing to the water and to the front line.
“There’s danger from there and from here.”
– ‘Used to explosions’ –
“We are already used to these explosions, we don’t care,” said Melnikov, who has now decided to leave the city.
“We have been living here since the beginning of the war, we have been through occupation. But now we have no home, nothing, no work. We don’t want to leave, but what can we do? We can’t stay here with the kids.”
The flooded residents crowded together, their belongings piled in sacks on the grass. Different pets kept.
A man wrapped in a blanket and with a headlamp hugged a gray cat.
Volunteers drove families to the bus station, where some took a free bus to the nearby town of Mykolaiv. Some were also evacuated by train.
Residents from nearby areas watched the water rising fearfully, fearing that their homes would also be flooded.
In nearby Chornobaivka, locals watched in fear as the previously dry riverbed began to flood.
“There was no water here in the morning and now there is a river,” says 45-year-old Tatyana Iyoenko.
“I can’t remember the river being full here since I was a kid,” she added. “I’m afraid we’re going to be flooded.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)