Minister admits flood alert mistakes

Yesterday was declared a national day of mourning in Russia. Families of the flood victims were beginning to bury the dead in the hard-hit town of Krymsk, where torrential rain and flooding turned streets into swirling muddy rivers, inundated thousands of homes and forced people to flee from their beds in the middle of the night. Nearly 19,000 people have lost all their belongings.

The Emergencies Ministry said it sent warnings out by text message, but some local residents said they never received them. Ministry head Vladimir Puchkov acknowledged under pressure that they were insufficient to reach everyone on time.

“A system to warn the residents was set up,” Mr Puchkov said at a government meeting where he was grilled by the deputy prime minister about the flood. “But, unfortunately, not everyone was warned early enough.”

The chief investigation body, the Investigative Committee, also said it has evidence the warning was not enough.

The poor handling of the disaster has highlighted Russians’ distrust of their government and president Vladimir Putin has tried to move quickly to stem the anger.

The Komsomoskaya Pravda daily demanded in its headline: “Why so many deaths?!” while the Moskovsky Komsomolets bluntly described the flood as a “disaster that could have been forecast and prevented” on its front page.

Mr Putin, who was criticised in past years for a delayed or seemingly indifferent response to disasters, flew to the Krasnodar region in southern Russia over the weekend, committed to showing he was taking charge of the situation. Federal prosecutors are investigating whether the population had been properly protected from “natural and technological catastrophes”.