KHERSON, Ukraine — Oleksiy Kolesnik waded ashore and stood shivering on dry land for the first time in hours, being rescued after sitting on top of a cupboard in his flooded living room before dawn.
“The water came very quickly,” said Mr. Kolesnik, who was so weak that he had to be helped out of the rubber boat by two lifeguards. “It happened so fast.”
Stinky, coffee-colored floodwater, with plastic bags and bits of straw swirling in rip currents, flooded a street in Kherson, the region’s capital, where rescuers organized a full evacuation. walk a neighborhood cut off from the rest of the city by street flooding.
The dogs in the pet carriers bark. People spilled out of the dinghy, exhausted, carrying at most a purse or backpack and sometimes a cat or dog. The scene, which overlooks a flooded square, is just a snapshot of the major disruption caused by Tuesday’s demolition of the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River.
Kherson, a center of Ukrainian agriculture in the south, stretches on the western slopes of the Dnipro River. Many residential areas were not affected by the flood. But the low-lying areas on Wednesday were a big picture of water and floating debris. In one place, a refrigerator bobbed in the water.
Across the city and across southern Ukraine, officials rushed to address a range of problems from flash floods and the emptying of the Kakhovka reservoir used for drinking water and irrigation – all along the war front. .
On a late spring day, the rescue operation in Kherson unfolded without panic, but with an air of resignation at the enormous task of pulling hundreds of people from their homes and sheltering them elsewhere.
Rescuers ventured to use boats to pull the frightened trapped people off the roofs or upper floors of houses. An occasional explosion from the artillery rang out.
Authorities are evacuating all residents of a neighborhood, known as Ostriv, or Island, which is also one of the city’s most dangerous areas for shelling.
In one spot, a red armchair floated in the flood. Elsewhere, trash floats in dirty water.
Larisa Kharchenko, a retired nurse, said: “We are used to being shelled but I have never seen a situation like this. her house. By Wednesday, it had spilled through her door.
“Someone needs to arrest Putin,” she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
In some areas of the Otriv neighborhood, the water reached the roofs of houses. “It just kept coming,” Ms. Kharchenko said.
Alla Snegor, 55, a biology teacher, stepped out of her boat and looked back at the flooded streets of the city. She said she was trying to stay away from the water.
“Think about what is in this flood,” she said. “Pesticides, chemicals, oils, dead fish and animals, and it also washes away graveyards.” She said she boiled tap water before drinking it on Wednesday, in case the city’s water plants overflowed.
Serhiy Litovsky, 60, an electrician, said he was most worried about the long struggle ahead for southern Ukraine, one of the world’s wealthiest agricultural regions but dependent on irrigation – most from the rapidly depleting reservoir.
“Without irrigation, it would be a desert here,” he said. “Without water, no one would live here. The legacy of this will last for decades.”
The scale of the disruption is puzzling, he said. “If there were no war, this would be a great disaster. But this happens with war.”
