Siberian Region Still Grappling With Floods
President Vladimir V. Putin headed Wednesday to a Siberian region hit by a week of heavy flooding, where exhausted residents and emergency workers struggled against the icy Lena River.
The waters surged past Yakutsk, the region’s largest city, on Wednesday and their levels began to drop, but villages downstream remained under threat because workers had yet to destroy all the ice jams clogging the river.
The workers have battled the ice jams using jet bombers and icebreakers. Alongside local volunteers, they have shored up dikes that have managed to hold back the water in most of Yakutsk.
In an outlying region of Yakutsk, families prepared for another night of camping out in boats and on roofs.
Tatyana Tarasova, a spokeswoman for the Yakutia regional government, said the Lena’s water level in Yakutsk had subsided to below the critical point.
The flood--which last week ravaged Lensk, a town of 27,000--has left six people dead and two missing, Tarasova said.
Putin left Moscow on Wednesday night for today’s session of a federal commission assessing damage and aid needs in the region.
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