Mudflow buries orchards on the Fergana rim

TALAS — A mudflow down the Tuura-Say, a dry wash on the northern rim of the Fergana Valley, buried orchards and damaged about forty houses in villages on its fan on Saturday, officials said yesterday. No deaths were reported.

The wash, which drains about 120 square kilometers of the foothills, carries water only after heavy rain or rapid snowmelt. A thunderstorm over the hills on Saturday afternoon sent a torrent of water, gravel and boulders down its broad bed, and within an hour the mud had spread across apricot and apple orchards and into the lanes of the villages below.

"It came down the wash like a wall, with stones the size of cows," said Dilnoza Rahimova, whose house was filled with mud to the windowsills. "The trees we planted twenty years ago are buried to their branches."

The territorial emergency department said yesterday that tents and drinking water had been sent to families whose houses were uninhabitable and that engineers would inspect the damaged houses this week. The Governor's office said assistance for the orchard owners would be considered once the damage had been assessed.