It Never Rains In Central Asia, But When It Does, It Pours

On May 30-31st torrential rainstorms caused chaos on Kazakhstan’s Almaty, Uzbekistan’s Tashkent and Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek. While damage was mostly limited to floating cars and flooded houses, for Kyrgyzstan there was a more tragic outcome, when people died in the flooding. 

Almaty, Kazakhstan
Kazakh mass media reported[ru] on May 31st that the country’s largest city, Almaty, home to roughly 1.4 million people, was literally awash. The city sewage system, which has seen few updates since Soviet times, could not cope with the deluge as traffic jams formed in the main streets of Almaty and residential areas, construction sites and the downtown business district all experienced flooding. Apart from fate, citizens blamed [ru] poor irrigation networks and fast-paced urbanization for the floods.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, which has a population of over 2 million people, was flooded on May 30th. Everything from parking lots to playgrounds was plunged underwater as huge traffic jams formed along the main intersections of the city. Commenting on a report published by Gazeta.uz, a Tashkent local, Vyacheslav wrote [ru]:

Heavy rain in Tashkent. Photo taken from the public Facebook group Drivers of Tashkent.

Shukhrat Alymbaev, another citizen of Tashkent, disagreed [ru] that the municipality could have combated the floods any better:

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
On May 31, Bishkek’s city council announced [ru]:

6 trees fell due to the gusty winds and rainy weather in Bishkek on May 30-31. As a result of the falling trees one person was killed, two cars destroyed… the flag in Ala-Too square was ripped, and in several other parts of Bishkek engineering works and other objects were damaged.

A man lies dead in central Bishkek on May 31 after a tree falls on his head. Photo from vb.kg/azzatyk.

Bishkek officials were quick to respond to criticism that the unnamed man’s death was avoidable and a consequence of municipal neglect:

Mobile teams have been organized in order to clean the city after the storm. A special tour to define the trees which are in critical condition was organized. Currently, work is underway.

The banality of the man’s death has resonated with Bishkek residents. Reportedly he was waiting for the arrival of one of the city’s ubiquitous minibuses when a gust of wind uprooted a nearby tree that suddenly collapsed on him. Another man struck by the same tree was taken in an ambulance to a city hospital and is recovering. Against a background of social media panic that Bishkek, an honored “green city” during Soviet times, is full of old trees waiting to fall down at any moment, one commenter on Vecherni Bishkek’s website mused [ru]:

I was going home from work and we were standing for almost two hours in traffic near [the shop] 1000 Small Things. I was so angry at the whole world but it emerges that there were victims of that vile weather. My god, now I understand that [what I experienced] was so trivial, and someone else lost their loved one.

Police in raincoats take shelter in Almaty. Photo uploaded onto Twitter by @4144777

Although few expect the freaky meteorological events of May 30-31st to repeat themselves in the near future, for many citizens of Central Asia’s key cities, the storms have simply re-affirmed a belief they are living in a self-help world while public services recede in the face of disaster. As Aleksandr Tikhonov surmised [ru] in a comment on gazeta.uz:

Our public services don’t work in these circumstances. Of course it is easier to say that “saving the drowning is the problem of the drowning”, but this raises the question: Why do we need a state, laws, and various organs of administration?

This article was originally published on Global Voices.