Thousands of Romanians prepared on Wednesday to flee homes threatened by flood waters from the rising River Danube, as emergency crews desperately sought to reinforce damaged river dykes.
Hundreds of police officers and soldiers were engaged in the emergency operation, racing against time to secure the bulging banks of the Danube as the water level began to peak after converging from central and south-eastern Europe.
Flood-water levels have broken 100-year records in several rivers across the Balkans this week, but the region has shown better preparedness to deal with the problem of melting snows, so far preventing any loss of human lives.
One such measure was the recent decision by Romanian authorities to flood thousands of hectares of farmland and forests deliberately in a bid to protect areas inhabited by people.
But on Wednesday at least 11 counties in Romania’s south remained endangered by the overflowing Danube, as officials readied to move several thousand people to higher ground from Bistret village, in one of the worst-hit areas.
The man-made embankments near the village were in danger of bursting under pressure because heavy rainfall was threatening to converge with the already rising waters.
Reinforcement work was also being carried out in the other counties, including south-eastern Braila, where several dozen families had already been evacuated, and Calarasi in the south.
According to an assessment by Romania’s interior ministry, about 120 localities were affected by floods, 170 houses were destroyed and nearly 700 others damaged.
More than 20 000ha of farmland and another 17 000ha of forests and other land were under water, along with about 500km of roads.
Meanwhile, a swollen Danube tributary in Hungary topped the 10m-mark a day after breaching its record level, and remained a threat to at least 165 000 people and 52 000 homes in 306 localities.
Hungarian authorities said more than 18 000 people — including the army, civil defence, firefighters and volunteers — were fighting to contain the Tisza River, which in Serbia joins the Danube that flows on through Romania and Bulgaria.
Officials in Serbia said the bulging Danube had stabilised, but that the flood waters had risen to 932cm on the Tisza.
The army joined emergency civil teams to strengthen sand-bagged dykes along the most critical part of the Tisza between Novi Knezevac and Senta, amid heavy morning rain that is forecast to continue for the next few days.
”The rain that fell in great quantities last night isn’t expected to endanger the flood defences, although the work became more difficult,” Serbian water authority official Zvonko Kocic was quoted as telling Tanjug news agency.
Kocic added that emergency crews would also work hastily to strengthen sand Danube embankments that have been built to spare the towns of Gradiste and Golubac, on the border with Romania.
The Danube is expected to reach a new peak later on Wednesday in Bulgaria, where the town of Nikopol was partly flooded and some riverside houses were evacuated.
As Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov visited settlements along the Danube using a boat, the police force in the north-western town of Vidin said it arrested burglars who were taking advantage of the emergency by trying to rob a factory.
Meanwhile, Serbia’s agriculture ministry said the flood damage to thousands of hectares of cropland would cost the crucial sector at least $3,1-billion, but a full estimate could only be determined once the water levels subsided. — Sapa-AFP