In the summer of 2012 torrential rains caused severe flash floods in Russia's southern Krasnodar region. 172 people, many of them elderly, died in the floods and almost 4,000 were inured. Several thousand people had to be evacuated, and 5,500 residents lost their property completely in the area's worst natural disaster in decades.
The town of Krymsk was the worst hit area. Its residents described how a five-metre wave swept through their homes in the middle of the night, turning the town into a mudbath. If people had been warned and evacuated, they could have been saved, but the authorities failed to warn them.
