A rare tornado swept through Russia’s Sverdlovsk Region in the Urals on Monday, damaging more than 100 homes, knocking out power lines and injuring residents.
The worst of the devastation was reported in the town of Kushva, located roughly 170 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg, where local authorities promptly declared a state of emergency.
Footage shared online showed a large funnel cloud ripping through neighborhoods, leaving behind uprooted trees, shattered concrete poles, and torn roofs
Healthcare authorities said 16 people sought medical help after the storm, with one person hospitalized in the city of Nizhny Tagil. Governor Denis Pasler said the lives and health of residents were no longer in danger.
According to regional reports, 32 private homes were completely destroyed and nearly 100 more were damaged. The storm also damaged over two dozen cars, schools, kindergartens, gas pipes and at least 15 power lines.
Some 4,000 residents were left without electricity, forcing critical systems like local hospitals to temporarily run on backup generators while emergency grids were restored. Water and gas networks were also punctured, requiring temporary safety shutoffs.
Pasler said 16 miners were also trapped underground at the Yuzhnaya mine after a power grid failure, but all were brought safely to the surface by 4am and sent home.
Emergency crews, utility workers and regional officials have been sent to Kushva to clear debris, restore power and gas supplies, and assess the damage.
The same severe-weather front also caused damage elsewhere in the Ural mountain range, including Chelyabinsk Region, where strong winds tore the dome off of a 200-year-old church.
Meteorologists have described the tornado as rare for the region but not impossible. Weather specialist Aleksey Pulin said such vortexes form in the Urals every few years, but usually over sparsely populated areas, and are often confirmed only later by damage patterns in forests. He noted that this latest event was highly anomalous due to its direct path through dense residential zones.