00:00Tyumen, one of Siberia's largest cities, made national headlines in
00:06July when the floods along the local Tura River began to resemble scenes
00:11of a biblical plague. Unusually heavy rains fell almost every day in June
00:18and July, raising the river level to 8.96 meters by early August, barely enough to
00:25below the record of 9.15 meters set in 1979. As the water rose, the
00:33Local residents complained of an unbearable stench coming from the river and reported
00:38having seen dozens of dead fish washed ashore.
00:42"I feel like I'm suffocating every night and I have to close the windows," said Svetlana, a resident of Tyumen.
00:48to the news agency Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. Once I ran out to the
00:55I'm out on the street at one in the morning, looking for somewhere to breathe. I live on the other side of the river and the
01:01The smell here is worse than anywhere else in the city, he told the media outlet in July, when
01:06Daytime temperatures in Tyumen reached a record 30 degrees Celsius. I found
01:11I found some fresh air in the center, away from the river, where I sat on a bench and walked around to recover.
01:17The breath. At the same time, record heat and wildfires have ravaged the north.
01:23Arctic region of Tyumen, illustrating what an environmental expert described as
01:28increasingly severe and markedly contrasting extreme weather events driven
01:35due to climate change. Tap water in this city of more than 800,000 inhabitants,
01:41Much of which comes from the Tura River, also began to smell of sewage and eggs
01:47rotten. Some residents reported skin rashes and symptoms of food poisoning.
01:53after using it for cooking and basic hygiene. Regional authorities declared a state
01:59emergency in Tumen and the surrounding district on July 28, almost two weeks after
02:06Complaints about water quality first appeared in the local media. Although the
02:12The state consumer protection agency, Rospo Trebnatzor, assured that the smell and taste
02:17The tap water in Tumen met all safety requirements. However,
02:22He recommended that residents boil their water before drinking it or switch to bottled water.
02:27Last week, authorities reported that utilities collected nearly a ton.
02:33Metric of dead fish in just two days of an ongoing cleanup along the banks of the
02:39Tura.
02:39The main cause of this disaster was the low concentration of oxygen in the water.
02:45A Russian environmental analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Moscow Times
02:50safety reasons. Although spring flooding is common in the Tumen region,
02:56The prolonged flooding of vast vegetated areas during the summer had never occurred before.
03:01in the Historical Record of Meteorological Observations, the expert noted. This vegetation
03:07It was underwater for a long time, almost two months. As a result, processes began.
03:13oxidation and the oxygen in the water disappeared due to the putrefaction of this organic matter.
03:19The fish had nothing to breathe, he explained, adding that the waste from local factories was a contributing factor.
03:24They could have further degraded the floodwater.
03:28Tumen is located in the West Siberian Plain, in a region that has one of the
03:33Russia's more complex administrative divisions, with two vast indigenous federal districts
03:39The resource-rich Yamalo-Nenets and Hanty-Mansi autonomous districts, integrated
03:46in the wider Tumen region. Together, the three areas have a population of almost
03:51four million inhabitants distributed over a territory approximately the size of
03:56From Mongolia. Fueled by record temperatures and storms
04:00Dry electrical storms had ravaged more than 37,000 hectares of taiga.
04:06virgin territory in the southern part of the district. Russia experienced its hottest July since the beginning of the pandemic.
04:12the records in 1891, a result that meteorologists attributed to temperatures
04:17very high in the eastern Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, while the regions
04:23Western climates generally remained cold.
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