Swimming was banned on the Black Sea coast after the flood: “It is in a terrible state”

The height of the holiday season turned into terrible weather disasters for the southern city of Tuapse, located on the Black Sea coast. Flooding, tornadoes and hail spoiled the lives of local residents and tourists. Unfortunately, there were no human casualties. On Thursday, the situation stabilized, and the local authorities are eliminating the consequences of the wrath of the elements. Moskovsky Komsomolets learned about how people are coping with the consequences and what is happening now in the south of Russia.

The middle of July turned out to be catastrophic for the residents of Tuapse and visiting tourists. Due to the downpour, water flows from the mountains flooded the surrounding settlements. Hundreds of houses, embankments, cars, trees were under water. Four people were declared missing, the dead bodies of two of them have already been found – this is 19-year-old Angelina Kombarova and 67-year-old Vladimir Filipov.

Now local authorities are engaged in the restoration of the infrastructure destroyed by the cataclysms. “In the morning, operational mobile groups went to the settlements to examine the affected households and assess the damage caused,” Sergey Boyko, head of the Tuapse district, said on social networks. “Their task is to inspect houses and apartments, communicate with people, determine the degree of damage, draw up acts, and also find out if help is needed.”

And people really need help. To date, electricity has been restored for 50% of consumers, and drinking water is delivered to disaster areas in barrels. Local merchants and volunteers got involved, collecting and delivering humanitarian aid to people: water and food kits, which include tea, coffee and instant noodles.

The damage caused to flora and fauna is also becoming a significant problem. In the affected areas, disposal of dead animals, both wild and domestic, is required. For these purposes, the veterinary supervision of the Tuapse district created five operational teams, making a detour around the streets of courtyards, as well as exploring rivers and the sea coast in search of corpses. “We lost the frogs that lived in the thickets near the river,” Sergey, a resident of the Tuapse district, tells MK, “before, there were such trills at night that the windows were closed, and now there is silence – they were all washed away by the stream into the sea. There are no frogs.”

“There are rules for the destruction of biological waste,” the veterinary department of the Tuapse district told MK, “we have an emergency situation, flooding, the decree stipulates the presence of fallen corpses and the involvement of the veterinary service. We handed out leaflets to people with a phone number on which you can call to call a team that works in that area to dispose of dead animals. Doctors come, examine the corpses, look who has fallen, take samples if necessary, then pack the bodies. Then, either the administration organizes transport, or we use our own transport to deliver it to the disposal site. From the documents, the owner is not required to provide anything.

Is this procedure free?

— Free.

– Is there a long queue for the removal of biological waste, are there enough teams?

We haven’t had any delays yet. But I can’t say how quickly the procedure will go, it all depends on the speed of transport.

According to the stories of local residents, the situation as a whole has more or less stabilized. The settlements surrounding Tuapse suffered more than the city itself. Cars drive along the streets, people walk, grandmothers sit on benches. “The roads are quite dry, there are puddles, of course,” local resident Victoria Boychuk told MK, “but they are not critical, everything is fine in the city, only the wind is blowing, warm and very strong. Our urban plants were badly damaged by the rain. The oleanders were so fluffy and vigorous a few days ago, but today they look rumpled and lethargic.”

What is the state of the sea?

– The water on the sea is muddy, with the naked eye you can see a huge brown spot in the sea, this clay has risen. I don’t even know how much it takes now to get rid of dirt. A week minimum. There are a lot of branches and debris floating in the water. The sky is gloomy, the waves are strong, well, that’s all, perhaps. In addition to a terrible hail, nothing terrible happened, there is a storm, but not very big.

– How do tourists react – leave?

– Many locals themselves have become like tourists, hastily dispersed to other regions, some even live in cars, and some in tents. They say that there are problems with train tickets. Those who are in their cars are leaving, and not only.

Despite the fact that travel restrictions are slowly being lifted from federal highways, swimming in the sea is prohibited until July 19, but the warning does not stop everyone. Meanwhile, doing this is dangerous, because logs and large objects float in the sea, not to mention the risk of getting an intestinal infection. But queues formed in local water parks, but according to local residents, they are also not in the best condition now.

“After a tornado and rain, the sea will not be clean,” says Oksana, who lives in the village of Dzhubga. – The sun came out in Dzhubga, the water was dirty-brown, the whole beach was covered with garbage, but people are sunbathing. In dirt and germs. Many with children do not disdain anything at all, and some especially smart men even swim. In Anapa, a man climbed drunk to swim in a storm and drowned, they got him already dead, covered him, he lay on the beach until the ambulance and the police arrived, and nearby people were sunbathing.

What is the state of the coast?

— Terrible. There is a persistent smell of iodine and rot. You walk and think how not to step on some dead animal, but here it happens. But all this will be cleaned, for us this is not uncommon, we are already used to it. Two years ago, the sea was raging and a lot of garbage washed up on the shore.

Experts are also optimistic. “The water is dirty in a thin strip near the shore,” says a senior lecturer in the Department of Oceanology, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov Sergei Mukhametov, – for the sea as a whole, this is not significant. The main Black Sea current moves counterclockwise, that is, washed-out debris, which will be dragged with positive buoyancy towards Dzhubga, Divnomorsky and Gelendzhik.