Nine people were reported dead Wednesday and 11 others missing after some of the heaviest storms in years lashed Russia's most populous city in the far east.
Administration officials in this key port city of 700,000 said that some 20 centimeters (eight inches) of rain had poured down in a 24-hour span, more than a month's equivalent for this time of year.
Regional governor Sergei Darkin declared a state of emergency in Vladivostok, and weather forecasters predicted several more days of rain.
More than 1,500 homes were at least partially flooded in Vladivostok and surrounding districts affecting more than 30,000 residents.
Water supplies were limited to just three or four hours per day after most of city's water storage sites became contaminated while the water filtration center ground to a halt.
In all, the floods have cause some 350 million rubles (12 million dollars, 13.7 million euros) of damage, a high figure for the cash-strapped Pacific coast region, officials said.
Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu held an urgent meeting in Moscow to assess the situation.
Police said more than 70 kilometers (some 40 miles) of roads had been washed away. Fourteen road bridges and one used by trains were reported damaged by the rushing rivers.
"We ran out on the street in our pajamas in the middle of the night" after hearing the support of the railway bridge crash to the ground," said local resident Svetlana Lukretskaya, a 46-year-old school teacher.
"It was dark and raining and no one really knew what was going on. We were afraid to go back inside because our house might have washed away too."
Officials said that much of Vladivostok remains cut off from the rest of Russia as a result.
Traffic on the vital trans-Siberian railroad came to a halt and railroad workers said it would take at least three days to fix the damaged rails and bridges.
Officials said that the disruption would not affect the return train trip of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, who is concluding a three-week voyage across Russia back to his Stalinist state.
Kim will cross into North Korea at the Khassan border, to the west of the damaged bridge.
Still, officials cautioned that the Vladivostok port may also grind to a halt because it cannot currently be supplied with fuel.
In Vladivostok proper, some 25,000 people have been left without electricity for the second day running.
Meanwhile in surrounding settlements, police spotted nearly 100 people who preferred to camp out on their flooded homes' roofs rather than leave the region, fearing that their properties will be looted once the waters subside.
Police said children as young as four and even family pets were living on top of their small huts in the suburb of Sputnik.
Separately, witnesses reported that the floods have washed away parts of the city's largest cemetery, the Morskoye, and that several coffins had been spotted floating down flooded streets -- VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AFP)
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