This video of the Guadalupe was shot in Kerrville, Tx from the Center Bridge. Watch how fast these flood waters were traveling & washing everything in front of it out.
It goes from low & barley flowing to over the top of the bridge in around 35 minutes.
I sped the video up to… pic.twitter.com/NcQe4UAQBa

— Clyp Keeper (@DGrayTexas45) July 6, 2025

The catastrophic flooding in Kerr County has claimed the lives of at least 43 individuals, including 15 children, while an additional eight fatalities occurred in surrounding counties, The Associated Press reported. Officials have not disclosed the total number of missing persons beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp situated along a river in Kerr County where the majority of victims were found, The Associated Press stated.

The devastating, rapidly moving waters surged 26 feet (8 meters) on the Guadalupe River in merely 45 minutes before dawn on Friday, sweeping away residences and vehicles. The threat persisted as rainfall continued to hammer communities near San Antonio on Saturday, with flash flood warnings and watches remaining active.

Emergency personnel deployed helicopters, watercraft, and drones to search for victims and rescue individuals trapped in trees and at camps cut off by washed-out roadways. Governor Greg Abbott pledged that authorities would maintain round-the-clock operations and announced that new areas were being searched as floodwaters subsided. He designated Sunday as a day of prayer for the state. "I urge every Texan to join me in prayer this Sunday – for the lives lost, for those still missing, for the recovery of our communities, and for the safety of those on the front lines," Abbott stated.

Officials are facing examination over whether the camps and residents in areas historically susceptible to flooding received adequate warning and whether sufficient preparations were implemented. AccuWeather reported that the private forecasting company and the National Weather Service issued warnings about potential flash flooding hours in advance." These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety," AccuWeather stated. The company characterized the Hill Country as one of the most flash-flood-prone regions in the US due to its terrain and numerous water crossings.

The hills surrounding the Guadalupe River in central Texas are scattered with century-old youth camps and campgrounds where multiple generations of families have gathered to swim and enjoy outdoor activities. The region experiences particular popularity around the July Fourth holiday, complicating efforts to determine how many individuals are missing. "We don't even want to begin to estimate at this time," Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice stated earlier.

At the Mo-Ranch Camp in the Hunt community, officials had monitored weather conditions and decided to relocate several hundred campers and attendees at a church youth conference to higher ground. At nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista, organizers also mentioned on social media that they were monitoring weather conditions the day before concluding their second summer session Thursday.

Desperate parents and families shared photographs of missing loved ones and appeals for information. Officials reported that more than 850 people had been rescued in the previous 36 hours, with heroic efforts at the camps to save children. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived and committed that the Trump administration would utilize all available resources. Coast Guard helicopters and aircraft were providing assistance to ensure operations could continue even in darkness.

A real life illustration on the power and speed of a Texas Flash Flood . If you don't understand - this is why people sleeping might have been swept away. This is few hours ago (afternoon of July 5) on the Llano River at the crossing of Ranch Road 3404 at the Kingsland Slab, a… pic.twitter.com/pZiPgKlNb0

— JW Spencer (@jeffwspencer) July 5, 2025

 One reunification center at an elementary school remained mostly quiet after accommodating hundreds of evacuees the previous day. "We still have people coming here looking for their loved ones. We've had a little success, but not much," stated Bobby Templeton, superintendent of Ingram Independent School District.

In Ingram, Erin Burgess awakened to thunder and rain in the middle of the night. Just 20 minutes later, water was flooding into her home, she reported. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree with her teenage son. "My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them," she explained.

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The research team analyzed more than 300 asymmetrical ridges within a geological corridor that crosses a submarine ridge – once the barrier between the Mediterranean's western and eastern basins. The scientists discovered a distinctive "W-shaped channel" in the continental shelf east of the ridge. This channel's unique shape and position indicate it functioned as a massive funnel, directing water toward the submarine Noto Canyon during the mega-flood event.

When the team sampled these ridges, they found a covering layer of rock fragments dating to the crucial transition period between the Mediterranean's dry phase and its refilling. This layer contained eroded materials from nearby areas, suggesting rapid deposition under tremendous force.

"The Zanclean megaflood was an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon, with discharge rates and flow velocities dwarfing any other known floods in Earth's history," Dr. Aaron Micallef, the study's lead author and researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, said.

"The morphology of these ridges is compatible with erosion by large-scale, turbulent water flow with a predominantly north easterly direction," Paul Carling, professor emeritus at the University of Southampton and study co-author, said. "They reveal the immense power of the Zanclean Megaflood and how it reshaped the landscape, leaving lasting imprints on the geological record," he added.

This discovery challenges the previous scientific consensus, which held that the Mediterranean's dry period ended gradually over 10,000 years.

To better understand the flood's dynamics, the research team developed sophisticated computer models simulating water behavior during the event. Their models indicate that the flood's direction shifted and its intensity increased over time, ultimately reaching velocities of up to 32 meters (105 feet) per second.

The scale of the Zanclean mega-flood was staggering – calculations suggest it discharged water equivalent to 40,000 Olympic swimming pools into the Mediterranean Sea every second, or 68 billion liters (18 billion gallons) per second.

The study provides crucial context about the period between 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago, when the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic Ocean and largely evaporated, resulting in massive salt deposits that transformed the regional landscape.

The post Could this mega-flood discovery rewrite Earth's history? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"I see you've never been to southern Ukraine in June," Slava tells me with a smile as I am glued to the window of the car, looking in awe at the stunning blossoms that grew in the fields in the Kherson region that not long ago were the scenes of battle. Less than six months ago, the area changed hands several times between the Ukrainian and Russian armies.

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In the end, the Russian military finally retreated, but not before completely destroying the local infrastructure that is now covered with thousands of blooming poppies, lavender, and knapweeds.

I could not help but think of Israeli poet Natan Yonatan, and his poem "There Are Flowers," in which he wrote, "Have you seen this crimson that screamed to lengths, a bloody field was there before now it's a poppy field." I could not believe how accurately his words described what I saw before me.

Video: Neta Bar in Ukraine

As we travel, our driver Vitya – a fighter of the Ukrainian military's intelligence unit who spends his days off accompanying journalists to the battlefields – points to areas where he had fought and lost friends.

"Do you see that part there? That's where the Russians almost crushed us, but we made them retreat," he says.

"All of Ukraine is here with us"

Despite what one might think, the horrors of the battles that were waged last summer against the hills of the Kherson region were not the reason our team risked traveling to Ukraine, including on roads that have not yet been completely cleared of mines.

The event that led us here was the recent explosion at the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, during which a significant portion of the structure was destroyed.

The dam was breached and water from its massive reservoir flowed into the river, which then flooded a vast area, including dozens of villages, towns, and the city of Kherson itself.

Slava and his wife volunteered together, distributing drinking water, hygiene products, and cherries from their garden in an armored vehicle.

We continue to drive and the atmosphere quickly turns gloomy as we approach a poppy-filled hill, where just a week ago there was a beautiful flowing river, but where now stands a village completely submerged in water. Slava and I both cannot help but swear in anger.

We arrive at the Yurivka village, which used to be located several dozen meters away from the local Inhulets river, but whose edges are now also flooded with water that rose as a result of the dam explosion.

"We haven't had water in five days," one of the residents said. "There are three wells in the area, but they all have been contaminated, so we don't use them to drink water anymore. It's painfully ironic that we are drowning in the water while there is none to drink."

Slava immediately finds a pump and creates his own water distribution system, helping the locals, so cheerfully that one almost forgets that we are in a disaster zone. The rest of the village looks like the idyllic postcard of Eastern European village life: geese walking around, cherry and mulberry trees overflowing with fruit, and young boys and girls wandering idly together.

But the situation is the exact opposite on the edge of the village, with dozens of volunteers working to rescue people caught in the flood and deliver aid to those whose homes were flooded. The operation is run by Ukrainian soldiers, who are off duty at the moment. They are suspicious of journalists, but when we arrive and they realize that we came to volunteer, they nod in approval.

"This is not at all how I thought I was going to spend my vacation," said one of the soldiers, who was originally supposed to be at home with his wife and children after fighting in Donbas. "These are my people, I can't abandon them."

On the other side of the road, the locals built a makeshift soup kitchen, where they prepare hot meals for the soldiers. Despite the tragedy that befell their village, they are beaming with pride.

"It's good to see our soldiers here. We suffered for ten months under the Russian occupation, the village was cut off and no one took care of us. This disaster is terrible, but at least all of Ukraine is here with us," said Vera.

Although initially suspicious of me, the soldiers later offer me to join them in a rescue operation by boat. I go with Danilo Makrook, a local pensioner, on a small motorboat loaded with bottled water. Our destination is a small cluster of homes on a hill right next to the river, which has become an island where some elderly people, who cannot leave, live.

We set out on the journey, and the sights are far from pleasant: rooftops sticking out of the water, with fuel spills and dead pets floating around.

"We have to be very careful because the Russians paved the entire area with mines that were washed away with the flood," Danilo tells me. We hear bombing in the distance, although Danilo assures me that the Russian military is stationed very far away.

On the way, we notice a goat taking shelter on one of the rooftops. Knowing it's unable to swim to safety, we rescue it and bring it on board the boat.

"We will rebuild"

Back in the village, I meet the mayor, Yurovitch. He is thrilled to discover that his hometown is being visited by a Jew, and an Israeli, no less.

"I pray a lot for Israel," the tells me, and I cannot help but wonder how a man whose village has suffered so much, whose village is going through a crisis, has the headspace to think about and be concerned for the safety of a country thousands of miles away.

When I see Yurovitch's car, I notice the sticker of a Protestant religious organization, which explains his love of Israel.

"There are about 20 houses that have been flooded completely, so they cannot be used and we will probably need to destroy them. The homes here are built of clay bricks, so once they get wet, there is not much we can do.

"The locals don't have much, and those who were affected lost the little that they did have, but we will help them. We will rebuild the houses. We will get donations, like equipment, and the residents will take care of each other.
Meanwhile, Slava has distributed all the water and hygiene products. As it turns out, there is a personal element to the humanitarian journey he is accompanying me on.

You see, across the hill, in the town of Snihurivka, lives Slava's grandmother, 80-year-old Zina. We arrive at her house, which is in a small suburban neighborhood and is surrounded by fruit trees. She meets us with a feast – soups, bagels, and the very popular Ukrainian dish calf's foot jelly, which I have to admit, I had a hard time eating.
Zina is in the kitchen around the clock, preparing food for the soldiers and the volunteers.

"A real Jew," she says when she looks at me. "I haven't seen one like this here in many, many years."

Thankfully, Zina's home, which is also built of clay bricks, is further away from the river, so it was not affected by the flood.

"I've lived by the Inhulets my entire life, and seeing it flow in the opposite direction [as a result of the dam explosion] was a very upsetting experience," she says.

"Imagine seeing the sun rise in Tel Aviv and set in Jerusalem," she says, surprising me with her knowledge of Israeli geography as she fills my plate with another portion of calf's foot jelly, eating which was one of several challenges I had to overcome as a field reporter.

"It was a terrible shock as if the occupation and the battles around the town wasn't enough," Zina says.

Odjick can help with it all

The first night in northern Kherson was completely dark – pitch black almost as if there is very little electricity in the town. In one of the towns, we meet Odjick, who volunteers to rescue civilians from war zones. I first met Odjick last spring, when he helped me get out of a particularly sticky situation during the third battle for the city of Mykolaiv. He doesn't like to speak about himself so much, but I know that he possesses the skills of a true fighter.

Whether it's arranging interviews with reluctant fighters and senior military officials, accessing military areas closed off to journalists, or getting a tray of pizza in the heart of a battle zone – Odjick can help with it all, and make it look easy.

"I've found a place for us to sleep," he tells me. "Oh, and I brought a photographer with me," he adds nonchalantly, while I myself am surprised to see a well-dressed young woman trailing behind him with a huge backpack and a determined expression. Life is full of surprises, and the biggest war in Europe in the current century is even more so.

We wake up at dawn, after spending the night in an attic, and were even able to take a hot shower, a luxury at this time. Odjick came from the Donbas region, where he spent over a week in the trenches together with the front-line fighters in preparation for the Ukrainian counterattack.

"I've kind of forgotten what it feels like," he tells me after stepping out of the shower.

Odjick's skills were especially necessary that morning, as our destination, the flooded city of Kherson, had the previous day experienced a merciless Russian shelling aimed, sadistically, at evacuation and rescue teams.

Due to the shelling, the military further tightened the requirements for entering the city for journalists and rescue teams and declared the flooded areas off-limit. "These are the passwords for this morning's crossing," Odjick tells me, showing me a piece of paper. "We'll need them to pass through many checkpoints at the entrance to the city."

Vitya, our driver, loads the car with everything we need, and we set off towards Kherson, an hour-and-a-half-long drive on bumpy roads.

At the entrance to the city, we meet another team of volunteers who will accompany us, a cheerful group of youngsters who arrive in an old and obviously unprotected bus with an expression of self-confidence and an atmosphere of an annual trip. The bus is packed to bursting with supplies of essentials, water, blankets, clothes, and, surprisingly, many cans of canned food for animals.

"I thought my husband had drowned"

The volunteers are members of the Sandwox organization that carry out all kinds of humanitarian work across Ukraine. The group was established by young Odessans who met at the beginning of the invasion when they fortified the city with sandbags as it was in real danger of falling to the Russians.

When the danger was over – with the Russian military having reached close to Odessa, but later retreated – the same group of young people looked for new ways to contribute. Naturally, aid to disaster-stricken Kherson became a number one priority, and the volunteers showed up in full force.

"We cannot abandon this city. These are our people here and their suffering is unimaginable," says one of the volunteers, as she carries a box of blankets into a hospital that has been converted into a temporary housing center for disaster evacuees.

What I see inside quenches my heart: Dozens of elderly people were brought there after being evacuated from their homes by the rescue teams. The numbers are almost unimaginable: over 4,000 people were rescued from the rising river waters in less than five days.

Volodya, a kind elderly man, sits on his bed and stares blankly into space. Unlike the rest, he is actually in good health and only had to be rescued because he missed the warning about the dam explosion and his house began to fill with water.

His wife, Ludmyla, was out of town, and upon return, discovered her home underwater and her husband nowhere to be seen.

"I thought he had drowned," she says quietly, but still traumatized.

Volodya managed to escape at the very last moment. "I managed to swim to the nearby street, and there the rescuers picked me up in a boat," he says proudly.

The couple enjoys talking to the volunteers and asks that they stay to chat with them before continuing to the next destination. "We lost everything, we have nowhere to go and no one to take care of us here," Ludmyla says.

In the same room, I meet Igor, a boy barely seven years old, whose mother had died three months earlier in a Russian shelling, and whose home where he lives with his father is now underwater. While Igor's father is looking for a place for them to live, there is no one to stay with the boy. After everything he's been through, Igor is alone.

Local policeman Borya Bachov, who has been helping to rescue stranded Ukrainians, said, "What this city has gone through since it was liberated from the Russian occupation is a brutal shelling campaign aimed at the neighborhoods adjacent to the river.

"Entire areas were abandoned long before the explosion of the dam, and when the Russians realized that they could not control the city, they chose to try to kill it. The dam exploded at 2 a.m. in the morning, and by 7 a.m., a large part of the city was already underwater. People had to leave behind all their possessions. I arrived With my team on motorboats and we started pulling people from roofs. It was so surreal. In my life, I never imagined that such a disaster was possible. But the people here are strong, everyone is disciplined and listens to instructions, and there is a tremendous determination to get through this too."

Chabadnik with a helmet and vest

As we travel through the city the severity of the situation becomes more and more clear. There is no electricity, no running water, and 90% of the shops are closed.

"Everyone who could – left," Anna, a young volunteer who arrived with the members of the "Sandbox" group, tells us. Unlike the others, Anna is actually a resident of Kherson and her family lives on the other side of the river, in the territory still occupied by Russia.

"Only the weakest and most vulnerable have remained, the city has been dying for months under the shelling, and the dam explosion is only a fraction of the tragedy."

Finally, we reach our destination: the Kherson synagogue, a beautiful building that stands on a quiet street in the city center. The doors of the building open wide, and two men wearing kippahs come outside carrying heavy packages.

Right behind them is Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, the Chabad rabbi of Kherson, wearing a helmet and vest, quite the unusual look.

"My mother made me promise that I would not go outside without protective gear," he said. "What can I do."

We get in the car and visit several residents in the city. Woff has worked with the local community for 30 years, and some of the stories he tells me leave me stunned. For instance, under the Russian occupation, he was almost shot when he delivered medicine to community members.

"It was dangerous, but I had no choice. The city began to run out of medicine and members of the community were left without blood pressure medicine, without insulin, it was a matter of life and death," he said. "It was completely dark and I got lost on the way, so I stopped too close to the Russian army checkpoint. It was a miracle that they only fired a few warning shots."

Wolff's family stayed in the city during the occupation, and later, when the shelling continued, he sent his loved ones to Odesa, while he remained in Kherson.

The rabbi takes care of more than just the Jewish community, the entire city has become his extended congregation.

"I love this city so much, it was a wonderful city," he says.

Together with Wollf, we visit an elderly community member on the other side of the city.

"She has been in and out of hospitals recently, her health is not particularly good, so I come to her home," he says.

There are no words to describe how happy Chana was to see Wolff, carrying a six-pack of bottled water and smiling from ear to ear.

"This man is like my son, we have known each other for years, I used to teach his children," she says.

Looking ahead with hope

As Wolff and I part ways, I hear the terrible news. A rescue team working on the other side of the river, controlled by the Russian military, came under fire and several members were killed.

The gloomy feeling that overtakes the city is reflected in the heavy rain and darkness that begins to set in. We get to the Antonivskyi Bridge, which used to connect the city to the southern bank of the river but is now destroyed.

The monstrous sight of the mighty Dnipro River turning into a murky lake and flooding residential neighborhoods, businesses, and gardens, evokes a sense of sorrow and rage at the hands that caused this.

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"You have to write about this because it's not a natural disaster. Russia did this on purpose, they want to destroy the city and all of Ukraine," Vitya says as we get ready to leave Kherson.

Suddenly Fiora the photographer notices something. On a residential building, near the exit from the city, there is a mural that leaves us stunned. It was clearly painted shortly after the liberation of the city, and depicts Kherson as a woman, with the symbols of the city – watermelons and sunflowers – as she sails on a boat in a sea of raging water, her face turned toward the sun through the clouds, looking forward with hope.

The prophecy of the mural strikes hard. I can't help but think about all the people I met in the last few days, people who lost everything and their lives were ruined as a result of war, of man's evil.

As the car jolts along the bumpy roads of Kherson Oblast, I can't help but wonder when the sun will break through the clouds for Kherson and its residents, and for all of Ukraine.

The post 'Only the most vulnerable remained': Israel Hayom correspondent in flood-ravaged Kherson appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Traveling in Ukraine's Kherson region has become a nightmare. The rise of the water level in the rivers and streams, following the explosion of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, led to much more than just a series of roadblocks, many of which are still closed because of the landmines left behind by the withdrawing Russian military, but also a restriction of access in the area, and every intersection has become a military checkpoint.

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At one of these checkpoints, I meet the members of a family who are waiting patiently near soldiers with serious looking expressions. Petro and Lyudmila Dodik live with their daughters Anya and Hana in the village of Afensivka, in the east of the Kherson oblast. The water rising from the Inhulets River, a tributary of the Dnieper, completely flooded the village and the army evacuated the family to the nearby town of Snihurivka.

"We will clean it all up and rebuild everything"

"We left everything at our home. Electrical appliances, furniture, groceries. We left just us and our dog. Now we are waiting here until they let us try to enter our home and save our property," says Petro, but the family is surprisingly optimistic considering the situation. "We will clean it all up and rebuild everything. The Russians will not succeed in discouraging us," Lyudmila says with determination and a smile.

I arrived there together with a volunteer unit that has come to distribute drinking water to the villages affected by the floods. "Ironically, because of the extreme rise in the water level, all our pumping stations have been flooded and more than two thousand people in the Oblast have no drinking water. People here are drowning, but they have no safe water to drink," says Ivan Kohta, head of the civil administration in the town of Snihurivka.

The signs of destruction are distinct

"More than two hundred buildings have been damaged. It will be impossible to live in them, because the local villagers build with clay bricks and the moisture will just destroy the houses from the foundation. This is a fatal blow to a tiny district that has lost almost four hundred buildings during the Russian occupation and war," says the young officer, who was appointed by the army to oversee the damaged district during the ten months of Russian occupation. Signs of destruction are still clearly visible in the small town.

In the nearby village Yurivka, the village head, Valodya Yurievich, greets us emotionally. The small water tanker that drove up alongside our commercial vehicle goes to work and the villagers line up to receive clean drinking water. In the meantime, Yurievich takes me to see the enormous lake that swallowed up half of the small village.

"I don't know what to say about this anymore. The invasion was a tragedy, the bombings were a disaster, but this, this is a crime for which I have no name," says the village head, on the verge of tears, to the sound of the frogs croaking in the background, where chickens and geese gather on the roof of one of the homes.

The surreal sight of furniture and personal belongings floating in the water, reeking of fuel and filth. "I have no doubt that the Russians are to blame for this. This is their ultimate weapon of terror. This is the use of unconventional weapons against people, they can no longer abuse," says Yurievich.

"The enemy is cruel and I cannot ignore the suffering "

Down the middle of the flooded street, volunteers from the Ukrainian army arrive on motorboats to provide urgent aid to citizens whose houses were cut off from the road. The villagers set up a makeshift kitchen to feed the soldiers, who have come to support them through this difficult time. Dmytro (not his real name) is a soldier in the Ukrainian army who came as a volunteer to help the stricken district.

This is not really what I planned to do on my vacation," he says. "I have less than two weeks off after six months on the frontline. But our enemy is cruel, and I cannot ignore the plight of my people. Anyway, look at the amazing lunch they prepared for us here," he laughs and the grandmothers who cooked smile proudly.

"A Moment of Apocalypse"

Zina, the grandmother of one of the volunteers, lives nearby in a small house surrounded by cherry trees that produce an astonishing quantity of fruit. In a powerful and painful way, she recounts the moments when the villagers realized that the Inhulets River had begun to flow in the opposite direction and overflow.

I have lived here all my life, this river has been here every day, all day. Seeing it start to flow in the opposite direction was a moment of apocalypse for me. Imagine the sun rising in Tel Aviv and setting in Jerusalem," she says, showing familiarity with where I come from.

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If we thought that something was left of the rural tranquility at the crux of the disaster, it is disrupted only a few moments later when Russian shells start to fall on the other side of the river. A few minutes later a Ukrainian MIG-29 shows up in the sky and the firing stops. The Ukrainians around me seem pleased.

"We will win"

"Since we received anti-aircraft weapons from the West, we hardly see Russian planes anymore. Only ours. Now the Russians are going to be afraid to shoot, so that we won't locate their cannons," says the village head Yurievich, with a strange combination of satisfaction, defiance and anger.

Just then we witness citizens taking out the meager furniture from their flooded home and drying it in the mid-June sun. Despite dealing with the floods that have made their lives miserable, no one here forgets that this is not a natural disaster and humans are responsible for this horror. "We will win," concludes Yurievich with the same defiant expression.

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As shelling from Russia's war on Ukraine echoed overhead, dozens of evacuees on an island in the Dnieper River scurried onto the tops of military trucks or into rafts to flee rising floodwaters caused by a dam breach upstream.

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The unnerving bark of dogs left behind further soured the mood of those ferried to safety. A woman in one raft clutched the head of her despondent daughter. A stalled military truck stuck in swelling waters raised the panic level as Red Cross teams tried to manage an orderly evacuation.

Nobody knew just how high the waters rushing through a gaping hole in the Kakhovka dam would rise, or whether people or pets would escape alive.

The scrambled evacuation by boat and military truck from an island neighborhood off the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson downstream on Tuesday testified to the latest human chaos caused by Russia's war in Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities accused Russian forces of purposely destroying the dam. Russian authorities blamed recent Ukrainian military strikes.

"The Russians have hit the dam, and didn't think of consequences," said Oleksandr Sokeryn, who fled his house with his family after it was completely flooded. "They should not be forgiven."

Officials on both sides said the massive dam breach had caused no civilian casualties; the hurried escape aimed to keep it that way.

The island neighborhood was one residential area in the direct slipstream of Tuesday's catastrophe, which experts said was expected to play out over days as pent-up waters from the Kakhovka reservoir wash their way unhindered toward the Black Sea.

It could take days to know the real toll and damage.

In the early morning, before the floodwaters arrived, many residents tried to stick it out. But as the water level climbed in the streets, rising nearly to the tops of bus stops or the second floor of buildings, national guard teams and emergency crews fanned out to retrieve people who got stranded.

Video: Reuters

Some found themselves floating under the rafters of their homes as the waters rose. Space was limited on the trucks, and an effort to tow two rafts behind one went awry when the ropes snapped. One man chucked his German shepherd from the roof of the stalled truck onto another. Some residents clung to each other to keep from falling into the rising tide.

Officials said about 22,000 people live in areas at risk of flooding in Russian-controlled areas on the eastern side of the river, while 16,000 live in the most critical zone in Ukrainian-held territory on the western side – areas like those evacuated on Tuesday.

The United Nations said at least 16,000 people have already lost their homes, and efforts were underway to provide clean water, money, and legal and emotional support to those affected. Evacuations on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the river were ferrying people to cities including Mykolaiv and Odesa to the west.

"While towns and villages in downstream Dnieper River are going under water, the human and environmental cost of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam is a huge humanitarian disaster – and the international community must unite to bring those responsible to justice," said Amnesty International's regional director for Eastern Europe Marie Struthers.

"The rules of international humanitarian law specifically protect dams, due to the dangers their destruction poses to civilians," she said.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the flood caused by the dam breach was projected "to have severe and longer-term consequences on the humanitarian situation in the area" such as by moving mines and explosive ordnance to new areas.

Kherson, which was liberated by Ukrainian forces last fall, has already seen some of the worst from Russia's blitzkrieg campaign against Ukraine – alleged rape, arbitrary killings, and enforced disappearances during months of Russian occupation.

Today, shelling regularly continues from across the nearby front line demarcated by the river.

The post Ukrainians make desperate escape from floods after dam collapse appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

At least 80 people died and more than a thousand were missing Friday, as severe flooding in western Germany turned streams and streets into raging torrents that swept away cars and caused houses to collapse, according to German broadcaster ARD. 

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Family and friends were unable to track down loved ones as mobile phone networks collapsed in some of the flood-stricken regions. On Friday morning, houses collapsed in Erftstadt near Cologne, and rescue crews were struggling to help residents who had returned to their houses despite the warnings, the Cologne district government said on Facebook.

Video: Reuters

The North Rhine-Westfalia parliament will hold an emergency meeting on Friday. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told German magazine Spiegel that the federal government aimed to provide financial support for the affected regions as quickly as possible, adding it should go to the cabinet for approval on Wednesday.

Severe floods also hit other western European countries, such as Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

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