After the Waters Receded

Early in the morning of Saturday, July 7, a massive flood, wrought by heavy rains, swept through the southern city of Krymsk, population 57,000. It was later learned that city officials knew of the threat of floods the night before, but did nothing. According to official estimates, 153 persons died in the flood, though real numbers are suspected to be much higher. Over 7200 homes were destroyed.

Volunteers rushed south to help the beleaguered city, and donations flowed in from around the country and around the world. Russian Life’s own Tamara Eidelman was one of the volunteers. These are some extracts from her missives.

July 24, 2012 – The city of Krymsk is an absolute hell. At first you don’t realize this, because the city is destroyed in a rather strange manner, irregularly. You drive through the city and see normal apartment blocks, houses, stores, and it is as if everything is fine. Then, on the very next street, before every house there is a pile of boards and trash – all that remains of the home’s furnishings. Right next door there are completely demolished homes, houses without windows, without roofs. Sometimes they are simple little cottages, but there are also apartment buildings – two or three stories, and inside all is devastated. And everything is covered in a disgusting silt, which the locals for some reason call mulyaka.… Trucks are constantly driving past, and far from all the roads are paved, so the air is full of awful dust clouds. Combine this with the 30º C heat (86º F) and it creates a hellish mix….

People are constantly flooding into the volunteer camp asking for cots, linens, pillows, blankets and detergent… As to blankets there are unbelievable scenes playing out. The blankets are right here, in boxes where we can see them. Someone takes a blanket and it is ripped from him with the cry, “These are only for families with children.” He yells back, “My mother is an invalid.” They ask him to present proof. There was a time when we had a mountain of blankets, and we gave them to everyone who asked. Then it turned out that even that mountain was not enough. There were also sheets, then poof – they were all gone. But the people keep coming….

The victims were originally to be paid R10,000 for their immediate needs… But just imagine that you have nothing left. The depth of the water was different everywhere. One woman recounted how she stood in her kitchen, and put her grandson up on the stove and held on for dear life… Another man told how he and his wife, children and mother stood atop their stove, up to their necks in water, steadying themselves on the ceiling. A log crashed into the kitchen and knocked his mother off the stove. He had to choose: swim after his mother or continue to hold onto his wife and children. He chose the latter and his mother drowned. And now these people are supposed to buy something for their immediate needs for R10,000? When prices in the city have flown sky high and there is nothing to buy?

.…It is completely unbearable to see an 80-year-old woman, who has dragged herself through the heat from the edge of the city to obtain, in the best case, a blanket… or mothers or fathers with children who are completely bewildered, because they are unable to help their family. Of course, at the same time up drives a young woman in a Land Rover, bringing her mother to us for assistance. The mother begins to raise a ruckus, because they gave her too small a frying pan, crying, “Putin himself gave me the keys to my apartment!” Why couldn’t a woman who has a Land Rover buy her mother a proper frying pan? The question cannot be answered.

There is nothing I could write that would adequately describe what I have seen this week. So I will summarize. First, don’t believe the announcements that help is no longer needed. Plenty is still needed. Not clothing, but concrete things.

Second, it’s not that those in power have done nothing; they are constantly busy – the army, the Ministry for Extreme Situations, the local administration. They simply just don’t know how to help, and therefore everything they do they do unbelievably slowly, and what with corruption, not entirely justly…

Third, there are many people who have lost their homes. What will become of them? They are told that new homes will be built, or that they will be given apartments in Krasnodar or Novorossiysk. But one cannot help doubting how fair this replacement will be. If a person had a house with a parcel of land will they stuff him into a khrushchyoba in Krasnodar?

Fourth, there are painfully few volunteers, and especially volunteers with cars, in order to distribute aid.

Fifth, to those who would come here: don’t be heroic and plan on coming for a month. People should be sent here for no more than a week; their nerves will not hold out. A grown man (seemed like military to me) told me that he was leaving on his eighth day, because he could not get used to it, that he was walking around crying.

What else? Well, there is this: Despite the hellishness, the chaos, the heat and grime, the swinish administration, etc. etc.... there are an unbelievable number of truly wonderful people here, both among those who came to help, and among those whom we are helping. This is what one needs to constantly remember, to keep from going insane.