Siberian city faces flood disaster

YAKUTSK, Russia -- Emergency workers are racing against time to strengthen dykes protecting the Siberian city of Yakutsk from the swollen river Lena.

Viktor Beltsov, spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry, told the Associated Press that the river's level was over a metre higher that the critical point at which water starts to inundate the flood plain.

Armies of emergency workers used heavy trucks to pile sand and earth on dykes and levees around the city in a frantic attempt to stem flooding.

Yakutsk, home to almost 200,000, is the last large settlement in the path of the river Lena, which loops northward for about 860 miles through the Siberian tundra into the Arctic ocean.

Even though flooding occurs in the Lena river basin and other regions each spring, this year's flooding is the worst for over a century.

The record water levels have been blamed on unusually warm spring weather that has caused many major rivers to burst their banks and an 18-mile ice jam clogging the Lena.

Ministry spokeswoman Marina Ryklina told the Associated Press that so far five residents had been killed and two more were unaccounted for.

Planes and helicopters used to rain bombs on the plug of ice 60 kilometres downstream on the Lena have been grounded by a heavy fog settled over the area about 4,800 kilometres from Moscow.

Interfax news agency told the Associated Press the ice had begun to break up and flow downstream, causing a new flood crest expected to inundate Yakutsk on Tuesday.

According to Beltsov, 1.5 square kilometres of the city have already been deluged.

The floods have brought Yakutsk to a standstill. Schools have been closed and all work halted except for doctors, police and hordes of emergency workers rushing to dam up leaks in the dykes.

Interfax told the Associated Press that hospitals had discharged all patients who were able to walk and relocated the others to the highest floors of city hospitals.

City authorities have also opened 35 evacuation centres with capacity for 20,000 people.

But many residents have elected to wait out the flood in attics and roofs for fear of looting.

Emergency officials have been distributing food and drinking water to stranded residents by boat.

People in nearby villages have driven their livestock onto higher ground, some tethering their cows to highway markers lining roads, said the Associated Press.

Last week the floodwaters inundated the nearby town of Lensk, leaving 14,000 of its 26,000 residents homeless.

One woman died when she and her husband tried to leave the city in a boat that capsized after being struck by a large block of ice.