Nadejda Chernishova breathes a sigh of relief as she steps off a rubber dinghy, moments after being rescued from her flooded home in Kherson.
“I’m not afraid now, but it was scary in my home,” the 65-year-old retiree said. “You don’t know where the water is going, and it was coming from all sides.”
Her house in one of the lower lying districts of Kherson was flooded after the Nova Kakhovka dam, 58 kilometers (36 miles) up the Dnipro River in Russian-occupied Ukraine, was destroyed earlier on Tuesday.
“[The water] went up in an instant,” she added. “In the morning there was nothing.”
Chernishova left most of her small world behind, bringing only what she was able to muster: two suitcases and her most prized possession.
“This is my cat Sonechka, a beauty,” she said, lifting the lid of a small her pet carrier and revealing a frightened animal. “She is scared, she is a domestic cat who has never been outside.”
Chernishova is one of hundreds being evacuated by Ukrainian authorities in Kherson, where the water has spread across several blocks and into the center of the city, cutting off some areas entirely.
“Civilians are being evacuated from the Karobel district. More than 1,200 people have already been evacuated from this area [on Tuesday],” the head of Kherson region military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin told CNN at the scene.
Prokudin, who has been overseeing rescue efforts in towns and cities downstream from Nova Kakhovka, said the operation has become more difficult with time as flood waters continue to rise.
“If in the morning we could do it with cars, then with trucks, now we see that big cars can no longer pass,” he explained. “The water has risen so much that we are now using boats. About eight boats of various types are currently working to evacuate people from the area.”
CNN witnessed the speed at which the waters kept rising, with the water penetrating one block into the city in less than an hour. The flow of water visibly increasing to the naked eye.
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