President inspects rainstorm damage in western Georgia

Georgia’s Adjara region is evaluating the damage caused by yesterday’s major flooding.

President Giorgi Margvelashvili left Tbilisi for Adjara to personally check the effects of the disaster and offer support to locals in the troubled region.

Over the weekend a powerful storm caused havoc on infrastructure in the Black Sea costal area. Streets of Batumi city were flooded as a result of the two-day heavy rainstorm.

This is how Batumi streets looked like after the rainstorm. Photo source: local media

The Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara said 5,000 families in the region still did not have power, after the connection was cut during the storm.

Emergency Management teams from Tbilisi were sent to Batumi to pump water out of flooded buildings in the city.

The heavy rainstorm caused a landslide at several villages in Adjara which caused serious damage to 13 houses. In one village, the landslide damaged a cemetery as well.

Authorities said emergency services were working effectively to clean up the damage. An emergency headquarters for the elimination of the consequences of natural disasters was set up on the Prime Minister's initiative and it was coordinated by the State Security and Crisis Management Council. 

The Secretary of the Council Mindia Janelidze, along with the representatives of the Ministries of Internal Affairs, Regional Development and Infrastructure and Environmental Protection, as well as local government officials, arrived in the disaster zone. Janelidze said emergency services were mobilised on the spot, providing the headquarters with information from the disaster-affected sites in a continuous mode. 

Batumi residents took the disaster with humor. 

Some of them even enjoyed the flood.