Heavy rain demand: how Bashkiria survived the second flood in a month
A state of emergency has been declared in the Askinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan — up to a hundred houses have been flooded in several settlements, and residents are being accommodated at a local school. This is another flood wave for this region — Ufa experienced a heavy downpour on July 9, and now the flood has come to the northern regions of the republic. Moreover, the main cause of the disaster was the erosion of the dam on the Sars River in the Perm Region. Izvestia investigated how Bashkiria copes with the consequences of abnormal weather events, and who should be responsible for the damage caused.
What is the current situation in Bashkiria?
On Sunday evening, flooding began in several settlements of the Askinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The reason was the erosion of a dam on the Sars River in the neighboring Oktyabrsky district of the Perm Territory. The water level in the river has risen by more than one and a half meters. Because of this, the villages of Urshady, Churashevo and Sultanbekovo were under threat.
Urshady was the first to suffer — 32 house territories were flooded there by Sunday evening. The head of the administration of the Askinsky district, Dinis Yusupov, transferred emergency services to an enhanced mode. However, on July 20, an emergency regime had to be introduced there. 32 houses in Urshady, 24 in Churashevo and 32 in Sultanbekovo were flooded. A temporary accommodation facility has been set up for residents at a secondary school in Sultanbekovo.
On Tuesday, Dinis Yusupov reported that the water gradually began to decrease. Electricity and cellular communications have already been restored in the flooded villages. All residents of the flooded houses have been evacuated and placed in safe places, and volunteers are delivering water and food to them. There are no casualties.
What caused the prolonged heavy rains in the Urals
The cyclone brought heavy rains to the Southern and Middle Urals. Forecasters noted that this is an atypical situation — usually at this time there is hot and dry weather.
Flooding occurred virtually the entire month. On July 9, Ufa was hit by a heavy downpour. In less than an hour, dozens of streets were flooded, cars went under water up to the hood level, and sidewalks were blurred. A third of the monthly precipitation rate of 18 mm fell during the day. And in Chishmakh, 87 mm of precipitation was reported during the day.
On July 17, a new heavy downpour hit the capital of Bashkortostan. Some streets were flooded again, and traffic was impeded. Residents, against the background of floods, signaled the poor condition of storm drains: allegedly, they were rolled into asphalt in places or they were clogged with garbage. Although after July 9, the authorities reported on the prompt cleaning of grilles and rain collectors of storm sewers from debris and leaves.
The cyclone caused the water level to rise not only in Ufa and the Askinsky district. In the Belokataysky district of Bashkiria, several houses in the village of Belyanka were flooded, also due to the situation in the neighboring region, namely, due to increased discharge of water from the Nyazepetrovsky reservoir into the Ufa River in the Chelyabinsk region. The influx to Ufa generally occurred from three regions at once. As a result, the authorities of Bashkortostan were forced to regulate the water level by increasing the discharge in the Pavlovsky reservoir.
In the Sverdlovsk region, streets in Kamensk-Uralsky were flooded as a result of heavy rains. In the perinatal center of this city, the roof collapsed altogether — the women in labor were evacuated to Yekaterinburg, and in the north of the region, a young mother had to be evacuated with her baby from Severouralsk to Krasnoturinsk by helicopter after a cesarean section due to the fact that the highway was flooded with water.
In the Perm Region, where the dam on the Sars River was washed out, the situation is gradually stabilizing, the regional Ministry of Emergency Situations told Izvestia. On Tuesday, water left 61 residential buildings in four settlements of the Oktyabrsky district, 11 more buildings remain in the flood zone.
Against the background of abnormal downpours, the authorities of several regions warned of the possible danger not only to local residents, but also to tourists. Those who planned rafting on the Chusovaya River in the Perm Region should wait a little longer: the water level remains high, landslides, landslides and rockfalls are possible in places, destruction and flooding of parking lots, there are a large number of trees and logs in the riverbed. This is dangerous even for experienced tourists.
Izvestia sent a request to the governments of Bashkiria and Perm Krai, as well as the Republican Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Who will be responsible for the damage
The situation when flooding in one region occurs due to events that occurred in another region, as in the situation with the Askinsky district of Bashkiria and the Sars River, which broke through a dam in the Perm Region, is interesting from a legal point of view, experts noted.
Evgeny Zharov, an environmental lawyer and managing partner of the Zharov Group Law Office in Moscow, said that victims often get lost due to administrative boundaries in the question of who should compensate for the damage.
— We are not talking about the fact that the regions shift responsibility directly to each other. Since the damage is compensated according to the classical civil law model, the obligation to compensate for the damage caused as a result of the accident lies with the owner of the hydraulic engineering structure (GTS)," the lawyer told Izvestia. — In fact, residents of Bashkiria, whose houses were flooded due to a breakthrough in the Perm Region, have every right to file lawsuits against the owner of that very GTS, regardless of its territorial affiliation.
He added that the regional authorities of the affected territory usually take over the function of first aid, make payments from reserve funds upon the occurrence of an emergency, but then, theoretically, the region has the right to set a recourse claim against the culprit in order to compensate for budget costs. Such a legal mechanism exists, but in practice disputes between regions or with private owners of the dam last for years.
The source explained that public payments to citizens provided by local and regional authorities, and sometimes the federal center, are one—time financial assistance that rarely covers the real cost of destroyed housing. But this compensation does not negate a person's right to demand full compensation for damage directly from the person who caused the flooding: if this happened due to improper operation, calculation errors or equipment wear, the perpetrator is obliged to compensate for real damage to property, restoration costs and even lost profits if it is a question of crop destruction or interrupted commercial activity.
He advised the victims in such a "cross—border" situation to fix the damage with the participation of the commission of their municipality, but to go to court with a claim not to their region, but to a specific balance holder of a dangerous object - and to do it promptly.
Insurance is another way to recover damages. The press service of the VSK Insurance House noted that in case of massive emergencies, as was the case during the Orenburg flood in 2024, insurance companies almost always introduce a simplified settlement procedure. However, the company stressed that we are talking about voluntary property insurance — for example, a mortgage insurance policy may not be enough in this case, since this program protects only the structural elements of the building.
Vadim Petrov, Deputy Director of the Unified Scientific Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Russia, Chairman of the Public Council at the Russian Hydrometeorological Service, stressed that it is important to carefully study the parameters of a particular dam before concluding why its destruction occurred: was it a design error or a malfunction, or was it simply not designed for such flood volumes.
Every region should prepare for new floods.
The VSK Insurance House indicated that they were noting a change in the climate picture and an increase in the number of natural hazards throughout the country due to an increase in the number of insurance claims.
"If we talk about regions that more often than others become epicenters of events leading to insurance payments, then there is a correlation between the density of buildings and the intensity of natural disasters," the company told Izvestia. — Moscow and the Moscow Region, St. Petersburg, Udmurtia, Tyumen and Novosibirsk regions, as well as the Rostov Region, Krasnodar and Primorsky Territories are traditionally in the zone of increased attention.
Apparently, such cataclysms will continue in the coming years. Vadim Petrov stressed that heavy precipitation in most parts of the land has already become more intense and more frequent, and taking into account further warming, the risk of rain and flash floods is only increasing. He refers to the latest climate report of the Russian Hydrometeorological Service, published in 2026 and containing the results of 2025: total annual precipitation last year was 110% of normal, summer — 113%, June — 118%. And all three values have become the highest since 1936.
— In 2025, 1,131 dangerous hydrometeorological phenomena were registered, of which 364 caused significant damage. And the biggest one was primarily associated with very heavy rains. This means that it is no longer enough to design and operate hydraulic structures based only on stationary statistics of the past," the expert noted.
At the same time, he noted that in 2022, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation found that there was no reliable summary information on the number and condition of hydraulic structures in the country. And an inspection conducted in 2025 in 11 regions of the Far East revealed an unsatisfactory level of safety at 429 out of 743 structures. At the same time, according to the source, there is another problem: the budget system is more willing to finance construction than long-term maintenance of the asset. He also recalls that Federal Law 117-FZ "On the Safety of hydraulic structures" places responsibility for their operation on the owner and the operating organization, and climate change does not exempt from responsibility.
The specialist also stressed that it is necessary for all regions to prepare for new climatic conditions, but especially for some. An increase in the maximum annual daily precipitation is predicted to be especially strong in the Far East and Eastern Siberia.
— The observed increase in maximum water consumption has also already been noted in certain rivers of the Black Sea coast, the North Caucasus, primarily the Kuban, in the mountainous and foothill regions of southern Western Siberia, the Eastern Sayan Mountains and the Amur Basin. Large cities require special attention: flash floods occur there when the intensity of rain exceeds the capacity of drainage. Even where the summer rainfall is decreasing, individual downpours may become heavier. Therefore, there is no single map of "safe" subjects — we need an assessment for each basin and each facility, systematic and scientifically based," he concluded.
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