ReliefWeb

Foreword

During the night of 13-14 June 2015, heavy rainfall over the Vere River basin resulted in sudden, destructive flash floods which struck the Vake and Saburtalo neighbourhoods of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, as well as other areas of the city along the right bank of the river Mtkvari. The Lisi, Tsodoreti, Napetvrebi, Bevreti, Tskhaldidi, Betania and Tskhneti areas around Tbilisi were also affected.

According to official government figures, the flooding killed 19 people (a further 3 are missing), displaced 67 families and directly affected around 700 people. The flooding also destroyed much of Tbilisi’s zoo, killing most of the animals, and damaged around 40 roads, many homes and a variety of urban infrastructure and communication systems.

A large landslide which struck the right slope of the Vere River’s drainage basin area near the village of Akhaldaba (about 10 km. west of Tbilisi) compounded the effects of the flooding by turning the waters into a torrent of mud and debris.

The Georgian government and Tbilisi’s City Hall rapidly mobilized various units which immediately undertook rescue and relief operations to help those most urgently in need. Their efforts naturally focused upon the most badly affected areas.

On the 19th of June, a few days after the floods, Georgia’s Ministry of Finance, representing the government, officially asked the country offices of the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank to support their efforts to quickly undertake a needs assessment which could serve as a basis for long-term recovery and prevention.

In response to this request, a team of national and international consultants from UNDP, the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) joined Georgian government and Tbilisi City Hall experts to conduct the Tbilisi Disaster Needs Assessment. The assessment was led by the Georgian Ministry of Finance and was co-ordinated by Tbilisi’s City Hall. The government identified the following sectors as a priority for the assessment: housing, transportation, water management, the zoo, and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) as a cross-cutting sector.

Initial findings on damage, losses and needs along with a series of recommendations for immediate, medium and long-term recovery were presented to the Minister of Finance, other government agencies and Tbilisi City Hall on the 15th of July. Feedback and government requests concerning this presentation have been included in this final version of the Tbilisi Disaster Needs Assessment.