Muddy Floodwater Swallows Village Streets in Turkey’s Sakarya

Muddy brown floodwater swallowed the streets of a village in northwestern Turkey’s Sakarya province, surrounding homes and the local mosque after torrential rain.

X user Halil İbrahim Şengün filmed the flooding in the Darıçayırı neighborhood of Karasu on October 15, writing, “The situation is very bad.” The footage shows people in yellow raincoats standing at the edge of a road that disappears into a fast-flowing brown flood, with yellow diggers standing in the water between houses and the minaret of a mosque rising behind them.

Heavy rain that began the night before overflowed into Darıçayırı, cutting off the road into the neighborhood so a public bus from Karasu could not get through. The water eased during the night but rose again toward morning, flooding the ground floors of homes and businesses. The nearby Akçay stream also burst its banks.

The Sakarya governor’s office said between 17.1 and 254.8 millimeters of rain fell across the province in 24 hours and that 420 emergency calls were logged, with no deaths or injuries reported as of 3 p.m. Governor Rahmi Doğan and Metropolitan Mayor Yusuf Alemdar visited Darıçayırı that evening, as the municipality deployed 750 staff and 240 vehicles.