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Flooding in Central Asia and southern Russia kills scores and forces tens of thousands to evacuate to higher ground
Unusually heavy seasonal rains have left a vast swath of southern Russia and Central Asia reeling from floods, with dozens of people dead in Afghanistan and Pakistan and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes in Kazakhstan and Russia.
Authorities say the flooding — the atypical intensity of which scientists blame on human-driven climate change — is likely to get worse, with more rain predicted and already swollen rivers bursting their banks.
Scores killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan
Lightning and heavy rains killed at least 36 people in Pakistan, mostly farmers, over three days, emergency response officials said Monday, as a state of emergency was declared in the southwest of the country. Most of the deaths were blamed on farmers being struck by lightning and torrential rain collapsing houses, The Associated Press quoted regional disaster management spokesperson Arfan Kathia as saying Monday. He noted that more rain was expected over the coming week.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a televised address that he’d ordered authorities to rush aid to the affected regions, where swollen rivers and flash floods have also severely damaged roads.
In neighboring Afghanistan, the country’s Taliban rulers said Sunday that heavy flooding from seasonal rains had killed at least 33 people and left more than two dozen others injured over three days. Abdullah Janan Saiq, the spokesman for the government’s disaster management agency, said the flash floods hit the capital, Kabul, and several other provinces.
He said more than 600 homes were damaged or destroyed completely, with hundreds of acres of farmland destroyed and many farm animals killed.
The Afghan weather service was also forecasting more rain over the coming days across much of the country.
Mass evacuations in Russia and Kazakhstan
There has been widespread flooding in the Russian Urals regions and neighboring Kazakhstan for days, caused by melting mountain ice swelling rivers; it is being exacerbated by heavy rainfall. In some places, only the roofs of houses were visible Monday above murky waters that had engulfed entire neighborhoods.
In Kazakhstan, more than 107,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, TASS state news agency reported. In the capital of the North Kazakhstan Region, Petropavl, the flooding was expected to peak by Tuesday, according to Kazinform agency.
“Why has it come to this? No one has done anything for 60 years,” said Alexander Kuprakov, a Petropavl resident, criticizing the government for having made “no investment” in the area to avoid such a situation.
Elena Kurzayeva, a 67-year-old pensioner in Petropavl, told AFP: “I was taken out yesterday and within 15 minutes the water had come in.”
Spring flooding is a regular occurrence but this year, it is much more severe than usual. Scientists agree that climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels is worsening the risk of extreme weather events such as floods.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said earlier this month that this was the country’s worst natural disaster for the last 80 years.
The floods have already submerged 34,000 homes in Russia’s southern Orenburg region, due to the rising Ural River. AFP journalists on Saturday saw residents being evacuated in boats and police vehicles in the regional capital Orenburg.
The Russian emergency services ministry, meanwhile, has predicted that more than 18,000 people could be flooded out of their homes in the Kurgan region, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Water levels in the rivers of Russia’s Siberian Tyumen region could also reach all-time highs, RIA cited governor Alexander Moor as saying on Monday, according to the Reuters news agency.
“Waves of large water are coming towards the Kurgan region, the Tyumen region,” government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Monday, Reuters said. “A lot of work has been done there, but we know that the water is treacherous, and therefore there is still a danger of flooding vast areas there.”
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Delia Ephron’s tale of love, cancer, and second chances, now on Broadway
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Delia Ephron’s tale of love, cancer, and second chances, now on Broadway
Writer Delia Ephron, famous for rom-coms like “You’ve Got Mail,” knows how to dream up a fairy-tale storyline. But Ephron’s Broadway debut later this month comes directly from the pages of her life.
Ephron has written about intimate things before, but now it is her own life that is on the stage for everyone to see. She said it was not easy, “because I am basically introverted.”
But she sure makes it look easy. When “Sunday Morning” first interviewed Ephron two-and-a-half years ago, she’d just finished a best-selling memoir, “Left on Tenth.” Now she’s turned that book into a play, telling her remarkable story of beating the odds. She said, “It’s the story of a woman who loses her beloved husband of 38 years, and a man from her past drops into her life and she falls madly in love. And then shortly afterwards I got diagnosed with a terrible disease, a fatal leukemia. And I survived.”
That’s right: seven years ago, because of her blood cancer, Delia Ephron was given four months to live. She’d already lost her sister, Nora, and her husband, Jerry, to cancer. But she somehow found love again, and got married in the hospital while undergoing chemo (a wedding that Dr. LaPook, a friend of Ephron’s, recorded).
Five-time Tony Award-winner Susan Stroman is directing the play. “It’s about second chances, and love, and life, and being brave enough to take those second chances, ’cause most people aren’t,” she said.
Stroman and Ephron share something in common they wish they didn’t. “I sadly lost my husband to AML, to leukemia,” Stroman said. “So, when I started to read the play, I knew everything about what was going on. I didn’t have to research anything, ’cause I had lived it, too.”
She said it is “tricky” to direct the play’s turns from humor, to tragedy, and back again. But it’s a trick Stroman mastered – as “Sunday Morning” watched, tagging along every step of the way, from the first meet-and-greet, to an early rehearsal, to the stage of the James Earl Jones Theatre.
Emmy Award-winner Julianna Margulies plays Ephron. “They’re saying it’s a rom-com, and it is,” Margulies said. “It’s romantic, and it’s funny, and it’s wonderful, but bring tissues, in case you need them.”
LaPook asked stage legend Peter Gallagher (who plays Peter Rutter, Ephron’s newfound love), “The play is about two people falling in love who are not in their 20s or 30s; they’re older than that. What’s the significance of that?”
“Well, you know, you’re closer to death!” Gallagher replied. “Everything is precious. And I think that’s another thing that the audience is going to recognize and feel.”
Asked about the play’s life lessons for the audience, Ephron said, “We plan our lives out as a young person: ‘Oh, I wanna get married. I wanna have children. I wanna have a career.’ You know, you make all these things. But then you don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s gonna happen to me after I’m 50? What life do I want then?’ It’s a much more open book. And this is about seizing those years and really creating something.”
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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Remington Korper.
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Almanac: October 6 – CBS News
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