The flood situation in Russia's southern Orenburg region remains tense as authorities try to provide relief to residents whose homes have been affected by the high water.
The Orenburg region was the worst impacted, with more than 10,000 houses under water after the Ural River overflowed its banks and several dams bursts near the city of Orsk starting last week, the authorities said on Monday.
More than 6,100 people have had to be taken to safety; 2,000 of them in Orsk.
Large parts of the city, which has 200,000 inhabitants, including its entire historic centre, were flooded, the Kommersant newspaper reported. Gas and electricity supplies were switched off, and the authorities declared a state of emergency on Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the regional administration in Orenburg said that older residents of the city of Orsk in particular had initially ignored the extent of the danger posed by the flooding.
"They didn't want to be brought to safety when the water wasn't there yet," she said.
The flood peak has now passed Orsk but will remain in the area around the regional capital Orenburg until Wednesday of next week, according to the civil defence ministry.
Authorities said that never before had such a high water level been recorded on the Ural River. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the formation of a special government commission to deal with the consequences of the flooding.
The Ministry of Civil Defence has also warned of a flood risk in Tyumen in western Siberia. There, too, preparations are being made for evacuations. In Kurgan, in south-west Siberia, a partial state of emergency was declared when the River Suer burst its banks.