KHERSON, Ukraine — Oleksiy Kolesnik arrived on dry land, trembling and weak, after being rescued from his flooded living room where he had spent the predawn sitting on top of a cabinet. “The water came really quickly,” said Mr. Kolesnik. Fetid, coffee-colored floodwaters, surrounded Kherson, the regional capital, and rescuers had to completely evacuate a neighborhood that was cut off from the rest of the city by inundated streets. Dogs in pet carriers barked and people emerged from rubber boats exhausted, carrying only their belongings. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River on Tuesday led to widespread flooding in Kherson, a hub for Ukraine’s agriculture industry in the south.
Officials rushed to solve a flurry of problems from flooding and draining of the Kakhovka reservoir used for drinking water and irrigation — all along a front in the war. The rescue operation in Kherson had an air of resignation at the vast task of pulling hundreds of people from their homes and finding them shelter elsewhere. Rescuers ventured out in boats to pull stranded, frightened people from roofs or upper floors of homes. In one neighborhood called Ostriv, all residents were evacuated.
Larisa Kharchenko, a retired nurse, had thought she could sit out the flood yesterday when water was knee-deep in her yard but not yet in her home. By Wednesday, she was being flooded out. “Somebody needs to arrest Putin,” she said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Alla Snegor, 55, a biology teacher, said she was trying to stay out of the water and worried about the contamination of the flood. Serhiy Litovsky, 60, an electrician, said he was most worried about the long term effects on southern Ukraine’s rich agricultural zones, which are reliant on irrigation from the quickly draining reservoir.
