INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Tightly clutching her ginger cat, Oksana Altynchurina sat in an inflatable dinghy, after rescuing only her pet and a few documents from her
flooded flat.In the southern Russian city of Orenburg, the River Ural has burst its banks, inundating thousands of homes, after heavy rain
and melting ice swelled rivers across the region and in neighboring Kazakhstan.Muddy brown water covered a vast expanse of the city, with
the worst-hit areas near the river where many live in houses and blocks of flats, an AFP journalist saw on Saturday.Russia's Emergency
Situations Ministry said Sunday that nearly 4,000 houses and blocks of flats in the city had been flooded.In some places, the water reached
the top of ground floors and some had not managed to retrieve any possessions before the water rose.As her husband pulled the dinghy along
weary waders, Altynchurina said that their ginger cat, Ryzhik, had survived in their ground-floor flat because he sheltered on a high shelf
and they heard him miaowing.Sadly her other cat drowned."The ground floor is almost completely underwater," said the 38-year-old housewife
whose son has disabilities."We had to climb through the window
children, receipts for housing bills.""Nothing else
Our furniture and our things are all lost."Lyudmila Borodina, a medical worker, sniffed and hid her face to cry, standing near her one-story
house which was waist-deep in water."I saved every penny, I denied myself everything, I tried for the sake of the house
dreading seeing what her house looked like when the water subsided, fearing she would not get any official help."Of course, [I feel] fear
And there's just no confidence that someone will help you."Locals sloshed through the water, bringing out pets and children in their arms
One man, Iskander Rakhmatullin, a bulldozer operator, was busy cooking food for his neighbors on an open fire."A hot meal when someone comes
out of the cold water will come in handy," said the 61-year-old.The water level was so high on the city's central promenade area on the
embankment that only the top of street lamps with security cameras rose above the swirling brown water.Water also lapped around a column
marking the dividing point between the continents of Europe and Asia, a local landmark."Where is the government?" shouted one man, rowing a
rubber dinghy down a street.The 25-year-old fruit seller, Islam, said that his house on the outskirts of the city was almost completely
underwater and he had brought a boat to try to rescue possessions for himself and neighbors."No one is helping us," he said
"No Emergency Situations Ministry, no one has ever come
We're renting a boat and we're paying 5,000 [rubles, $54] per day for it."
