On November 21, 2021, at 11:13 pm, the Emergency Situations Department of the Almaty region received a message that the body of the Knizhevsky reservoir dam had been breached near the village of Mynbayevo, Zhambyl district. Talgat Uali, the official representative of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Kazakhstan, told about this, the Kapital.kz business information centre reports.

The message specifies that the volume of the reservoir is 4.47 million cubic meters, at this time the reservoir is 50% full. The width of the hole is 5-6 meters, the approximate volume of water discharge is about 30 cubic meters per second.

“After the breach, the water flows into the channel of the Kargaly River and further into the Kurta reservoir of the Ili region. The filling percentage is 14%, the design volume is 120 million cubic meters,” the message says.