Moscow, August 29: One person died and two went missing when a mudslide swept away a dam in a remote Russian region early on Saturday, Russian news agencies said.
The accident followed a deadly flood at a hydroelectric plant nearly two weeks earlier.
Interfax quoted emergency workers as saying one person died and a woman and her daughter went missing when the dam burst during torrential rains which swelled the Tumannaya river in Russia’s Magadan region.
The flood destroyed eight chipboard (plywood) dwellings in a nearby village, in the northern territory of Kolyma, home to Gulag labour camps where Soviet dictator Josef Stalin sent prison labour to work in mines.
An accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydro plant in mid August killed 71 people and idled a major source of power in the Siberian aluminium and steel hub. The accident returned public attention to the need to renew rickety, often Soviet-built infrastructure.
—-Agencies