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Torrential rains fall out in Sochi, ground flights at airport, block traffic

Local reports spoke of the flooding of about 400 houses in the Imereti lowland and of small numbers of buildings in some other townships around the city
A view of a pier near Matsesta marine passenger terminal in Sochi Nina Zotina/TASS
A view of a pier near Matsesta marine passenger terminal in Sochi
© Nina Zotina/TASS

SOCHI, June 25. /TASS/. Truly torrential rains have fallen out in the Black Sea beach city of Sochi that hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 2014, compelling executives of the local airport to ground a number of jets and causing havoc on automobile roads.

Evacuation of residents from the areas of likely inundations was ordered by the municipal authorities. Local reports spoke of the flooding of about 400 houses in the Imereti lowland and of small numbers of buildings in some other townships around the city.

Rescue teams were evacuating residents to hotels and holiday centers.

City Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov demanded tough control over waterbodies and irrigation installations, as well as the round-the-clock monitoring of rivers.

Hotel managements and officials at municipal organizations have been told to take all the steps essential for ruling out people’s deaths.

Sochi airport was closed for inbound flights because of a partial inundation of the airfield. Sources at the air navigation service declined to say when the operations might resume. However, several airlines said they had diverted the arriving flights to the Krasnodar and Mineralnye Vody airports. On the face of it, thousands of passengers were awaiting the embarkation for their flights on the airport’s compound.