Krymsk 36 hours after the flood

When entering the city from Slavyansk-on-Kuban, traces of flooding are not so obvious at first glance, unlike the destruction. Two guys, locals, take pictures of broken store windows on their phones, passing by, repeating several times: “The city has been washed away, the city is no more.” They point straight and to the right, across the river, and say: “Go there, you’ll understand everything yourself.” While Nikita is talking to people clearing out the rubble in the shops near the market, we (me and my mother, she was the one who brought us here) look around, get used to it, peer at it and record it in our memory, involuntarily, it just happens that way. Some grocery stores are already open in the area, and people are constantly passing by with 5-liter bottles of water. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, it’s unbearably hot in the city from the evaporating water under the scorching sun, we hide in the shade of the bus stop.

Suddenly, the jeep literally bursting onto the sidewalk suddenly brakes. A man emerges from the jeep, seemingly unaware that anything has happened in the city. The woman, who is almost hit by the bumper, swears, a quick skirmish begins, an exchange of mutual claims, the man does not want to apologize, the woman almost breaks out in a cry: “There is nothing human left!” - a claim thrown, it seems, not to this particular man, but as if to the whole world at once. It is clear that she knows much more about what happened than the driver. Just one of the episodes. Next are photos and a short video at the end. It cannot be said that from these materials one can get a complete picture of the state of Krymsk on the day of July 8, when they were taken. I didn’t take pictures of the interior conditions of the houses and courtyards, it was simply inconvenient, so I’m posting what I have.



There are quite a lot of such cars in Krymsk, but most of them are simply overturned.



On the left is a row of shops, or rather, what once were them. People are raking away the remains of goods just to clear the place; there is hardly anything here that can be restored and brought back to normal. On the right is a car with a “disabled person” sign, no comments.

In some places the water is still very high, in other places it is completely dry, and somewhere approximately like here, we can say that this is an average level (reminder: the photographs were taken on July 8).














After several people in Gelendzhik were electrocuted after stepping into the same puddle, seeing such a wire in the water is quite unpleasant, but there is no electricity in the city, because if only... however, it’s scary to even think about it.






The water level at the stadium may be the highest we have seen in the city. There was also an area where the water was approximately mid-calf. The woman there thanked us for a long time for our help, she couldn’t believe that we had come just like that, and at the end of the conversation, after the words “And tomorrow is the funeral,” she began to cry.




In fact, nothing compares to the loss of loved ones, but it is a fact that people have lost their main source of income, their business, which they have been building, perhaps, all their lives. Here, for example, is what remains of a beauty salon.



Not far from the volunteer distribution point, everything is a little calmer here, people know that they are being helped. There are areas in which they don’t even imagine that there is life in the city, you can take clothes and food - they are simply afraid to leave their homes.




In addition to cars, the city has many fallen poles, overturned booths, kiosks, destroyed bus stops, broken windows in multi-story buildings, and broken windows in shops. On the right in the photo - people are cleaning furniture from a thick layer of dirt, the level of which on the ground in some places reaches their ankles.



And these guys, if I’m not mistaken, from neighboring Slavyansk-on-Kuban, got together and arrived the very next day after the tragedy. Here they hand out water, food, things, you can charge your phone or use an electric kettle. Unfortunately, not everyone could get to this, probably the first volunteer point, but in any case they were closer to the most flooded areas than the headquarters in the Rus cinema.









You can judge the water level by looking at the debris stuck in fences and trees.