In the towns and villages flooded, the evacuations of stricken civilians are still continuing in dribs and drabs, either because they are blocked by the waters or because they do not want to abandon their belongings. The NGOs on site testify to the difficulty of evacuating the victims.
Once again, the wagons chartered to evacuate the flooded from the Dnieper arrived almost empty in Mykolaiv. There were 1,894 refugees on Wednesday evening, compared to 1,700 in the morning. For Ksenia, an employee of Unicef in Ukraine, the problem is not that there are no victims to help, but that we cannot yet help them. “We were a little surprised this morning to see that there were only nine evacuees on the train, she admits. But you have to understand that many people in the flooded areas cannot get to the evacuation points. The difficulty is to access the flooded houses”.
“Everything is under water, it would take boats to pick up the victims. Some are sleeping on their roofs.”
Ksenia, from Unicefat franceinfo
“The majority of evacuations are improvised”, confirms Fabrice Martin who has just returned from a trying day in Kherson, as the means still seem limited. Director of the NGO Care in Ukraine, he describes evacuations on simple inflatable boats, with populations who despite the situation are reluctant to evacuate, often elderly people who have already refused to leave their homes, despite the conflict.
>> War in Ukraine: after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, “nobody wants to leave their house”, despite the danger
And the discussions to try to convince them do not take place in the best conditions since the fighting is never very far away. The time of the teams on site is limited, almost timed, explains Fabrice Martin. “We have to arrive early but we have to leave around three o’clock because that’s when there is generally an intensification of the bombardments. We are still in this atmosphere of war”.
Scattered mines, diseases… the dangers are multiple
A palpable danger combined with a major, invisible risk, that of mines and other types of explosives carried by the opaque waters of the Dnieper, released by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. They can be triggered at the slightest touch. A threat that will be even greater after the flood because all these objects will be buried under a few centimeters of mud, scattered, without any logic, according to the currents. And they won’t be the only dangers.
Evgueniy Chupina, of the Ukrainian Red Cross, think that the victims do not want to leave their homes, because they do not measure the extent of the disaster triggered by the destruction of the dam. “We must not imagine that the water will go away and that we will start living again as before”he insists.
“It is possible that different diseases appear, with summer, heat, graves or chemicals that would be exhumed by the waters.”
Evgueniy Chupina, of the Red Crossat franceinfo
On Wednesday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky called on NGOs such as the Red Cross to come to the rescuers of the State, in the flooded areas, to evacuate those who need it. The Ukrainian president also says he is shocked by the lack of international aid to Ukraine in the face of this disaster. An area of more than 600 km2 is flooded in southern Ukraine, “32% are on the right bank and 68% on the left bank” of the Dnieper, communicates the governor of the Kherson region on social networks.
Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday the sending of a “help to meet immediate needs”. About ten tons of emergency humanitarian equipment and goods will be transported, the Quai d’Orsay indicated shortly after, in particular “water purifiers” And “family hygiene kits”.