Muck and More Misery: Ukrainians Struggle To Clean Up Following Dam Breach

Yevhen, 13, looks over the muck and debris that stand where his home once was in the village of Bilozerka, in southern Ukraine's Kherson region, on June 14. Thousands of homes were affected by the June 6 Kakhovka dam breach that inundated communities along the Dnieper River Basin resulting in the biggest environmental disaster of Russia's full-scale invasion.

While many new homes survived the flooding, some older homes were swept away or left too structurally unsound to repair.  

 

Yevhen and his mother, Alyona, sit where their house once stood. With their home destroyed by the floodwaters, they now live with a relative in the village.

A car drives by the nearly empty Kakhovka reservoir.  With water levels expected to stay critically low for the coming weeks, 700,000 people in the Kherson region are facing a water shortage. 

Residents in the flood-affected communities are now facing the difficult task of cleaning up the thick muck that was left behind when floodwaters receded.

Mykola, a resident of the village of Bilozerka, empties a pail of debris from his home that was under water and is now covered in thick muck. His daughter was killed in their home by shelling a few months ago.

Lyubov, Mykola's wife, says that all of their household appliances were destroyed by the flooding.

With the high-water mark from the flooding still evident on her walls, Tetyana works to clean her damaged home.

Further along the Dnieper River, Hanna, an elderly resident of the village of Hrushivka, sits next to bottles of water that she received as aid.

A room full of water bottles. The draining of the Kakhovka reservoir has led to water rationing for residents such as villagers in Hrushivka, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, who now depend on bottled water.

 

Flooding in the village of Hrushivka has taken an emotional toll on residents like Tetyana.