Four Bridges Collapse, Hundreds Stranded As Floods Sweep Northern Turkish City

Four bridges collapsed and hundreds of people remained struck at homes and cars, urgently seeking help as heavy floods swept Black Sea province of Ordu and its districts on Wednesday.

More than half a million people were affected after torrential rains caused flash floods in northern Turkey. Fatsa, Unye, Persembe and several other districts of Ordu were among the hardest hit districts as authorities dispatched rescue and search teams across the area to help the stranded.

At least 165 workers at a textile factory are stranded when the flooding swept the factory, pushing the workers to seek refuge in the rooftop and other higher places within the building.

The office of Ordu Governor told media that authorities safely transferred 400 seasonal farm workers in Eskimadenduzu neighborhood of Fatsa district and 150 workers from another neighborhood in the same district.

The floods mostly take place after heavy rainfall on yearly basis. But the scale of damage and effect calls the infrastructure and the preparations of the local authorities into question. Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) urged the government to declare the area a “disaster zone” to immediately send urgent assistance and help to Ordu.

Given the devastating consequences of the disaster, the CHP reasoned, more effective crisis management is needed to handle the dire situation there.

The CHP and government critics blamed the government’s turning a blind eye on the reckless environmental policies and approval of controversial hydroelectric power plant (HES) projects, which cause significant deforestation in the Black Sea region.