(25 May 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4436460
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lysohirka, Zaoprizhzhia region - 18 May 2023
1. Various of island resident Ihor Medyunov greeting police on boats in his flooded yard
HEADLINE: Damage to dam submerges Ukraine reservoir island
ANNOTATION: The water level in the southern Kakhovka Reservoir has increased daily since February 10, until it submerged the marsh grasses.
2. Medyunov putting bags with humanitarian aid on boat
3. Close of flood waters
4. Medyunov walking through floodwaters inside his home
ANNOTATION: Next it came for the homes of the tiny island community.
5. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Ihor Medyunov, island resident:
"In the beginning it hurt a lot, but now there is nowhere to go so we will wait for a better time to rebuild, repair."
6. Medyunov walking through floodwaters in his yard ++OVERLAYS PREVIOUS SHOT++
7. Various of flooded furniture, belongings
ANNOTATION: The flooding comes from water washing over closed sluice gates operated by Russian forces
8. Boat sailing on water
9. Police on boat patrolling island
ANNOTATION: The residents contact with the outside world is now limited to a few food deliveries every week by Ukrainian police boat.
10. Wide of flooded home
11. Couple standing in floodwaters
12. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Lyudmila Kulachok, island resident:
"You understand that his is a war. Many people lose things in their lives. And then I thank God that all my loved ones are alive. My son is in Bakhmut and he hasn’t seen this and I don’t know how to show it to him."
13. Various of flooded home, Kulachok walking in floodwaters
14. wide of flooded home
STORYLINE:
The rising waters came as a relief at first, for both the tiny island community living in the southern Kakhovka Reservoir and for everyone who had feared the low levels risked a meltdown at the nearby Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.
Since mid-February, the water level in the reservoir has steadily increased, according to data from Theia, a French geospatial analytical organization.
An Associated Press analysis of satellite imagery showed the water has now risen so high that it's washing over the top of the damaged Russian-occupied dam downstream.
The waves first covered the natural shoreline, then submerged the marsh grasses.
Next they came for Lyudmila Kulachok's garden, then Ihor Medyunov's guest room.
The wild boars fled for higher ground, replaced by water fowl.
Medyunov’s four dogs have an ever-smaller patch of grass to roam, and Kulachok serves meals on a picnic table sloshing through the murk in waders.
Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country's drinking water and power supply.
The last dam — the one furthest downstream in the Kherson region — is controlled by Russian forces.
All of Ukraine's snowmelt and the runoff from rainy spring days winds up here, in the Kakhovka Reservoir, said David Helms, a retired meteorologist who has been monitoring the reservoir levels during the war.
Russian forces detonated the sluice gates of the Nova Kakhovka Dam last November during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, although they ended up keeping control of that sliver of the Kherson region.
Now, either deliberately or through neglect, the gates remain closed.
Because the sluice gates are closed, the water is cresting over the top of the dam but nowhere near as fast as the waters are flowing down the Dnipro.
River dams work as systems.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
