Residents of the flooded districts on Yakutsk outskirts were also counting their losses Wednesday. A man who gave only his first name, Nikolai, surveyed the damage to his property from a boat, as his wife looked on from an attic window and his dog barked from the roof. He said he was not counting on the government's assistance to repair his one-story house, half submerged in the brown water. The flood was far from a surprise to him and his neighbors, he said. We're used to it,'' he shrugged.
Siberian rivers flood regularly because they flow from south to north.
The snow that melts in the south, where the spring thaw begins earlier, runs into ice in the still chilly north. But this year an unusually cold winter and a warm spring combined to create a huge deluge, the likes of which authorities haven't seen in Siberia for 100 years. Copyright 2001, The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP Online news report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.