Three officials have been held on charges of professional negligence over a deadly flood that ravaged southern Russia's Krymsk city and killed at least 153 people, RIA Novosti reported Sunday.
The detainees are Krymsk mayor Vasily Krutko, head of the district Vladimir Ulanovsky, and acting chief of the district branch of the emergency service, Viktor Zhdanov.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
Residents accused the officials of failing to issue a proper warning about the flood. The administration said it launched news tickers on local television and sent out mass text messages, but the power was out before the flood, shutting off TV sets, and the text messages mostly arrived too late and in truncated form.
President Vladimir Putin had promised that local officials will be punished for their handling of the disaster.