Hundreds evacuated as more villages flooded in southern Poland
U.S. Water News Online
WARSAW, Poland -- Another 1,800 Polish villagers were evacuated recently as the floodwater that has swamped much of the south of the country overwhelmed dikes as it surged downstream, emergency services said.
Some 25 people have been killed by the floods and violent storms in Poland in July, including 12 since the situation worsened in the south last week. Thousands have been forced out of their homes.
In the latest rescue operation, people were moved by boat, bus and private car from six villages flooded after the Vistula river broke a 40-yard hole in saturated dikes in Zalesie Gorzyckie and a tributary broke out near Zlota, about 130 miles south of Warsaw.
No one was hurt, said Stanislaw Gacek, fire chief in the nearby city of Sandomierz, though some 50 houses were flooded and the region's main railway tracks were damaged. More than 12,000 acres of farmland were hidden under murky brown water.
Some 3,000 people were evacuated from Sandomierz, which so far has escaped inundation. About 1,000 firefighters and soldiers were helping local residents to strengthen dikes with sandbags.
Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek visited the area, drawing abuse from residents angry at what they saw as insufficient financial help from the government.
``Where is the money that you collect from us in tax and for water control?'' a woman screamed at him in flooded Trzesnia, according to Polish news agency PAP.
Buzek, who already pledged immediate aid to the victims, said they may also need counseling to cope with their losses.
Gacek warned that the wave of floodwater moving downstream was bigger than in the disastrous 1997 flood and that rivers might breach their banks in other places. But he said the work on the dikes should mean fewer leaks.
``The water is receding, the situation is stabilizing, but we still have a lot of trouble and work to do,'' he said.
Additional help could come from drier weather setting in across the country.
Storms and torrential rains have swept across Poland since July 10., flooding property in the Baltic port city of Gdansk and sweeping away houses in southern Poland.
The floods are the worst since the summer of 1997, when storms and rampaging rivers swamped 46,000 homes, killed 55 people and caused an estimated $3.4 billion in damage.
The German Interior Ministry said 45 German experts equipped with water purification equipment and power generators have arrived near the southern Polish city of Krakow to help in the relief effort.
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