(((Meanwhile, downstream from here...)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36130/story.htm
Hundreds of Romanians Flee Homes as Dikes Break
ROMANIA: April 26, 2006
BUCHAREST - Hundreds of Romanians were fleeing their homes in impoverished rural areas on Tuesday as rescue teams struggled to reinforce dikes holding back the swollen Danube river, officials said.
Heavy rain and melting snow have swollen waterways and inundated vast tracts of land in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary this month, making thousands of people homeless.
In Romania, the worst-hit country where tens of thousands of hectares are submerged, some 4,000 people have moved to high ground since Sunday after earth-work dikes near poor southern villages collapsed, putting the total of evacuees at 9,520.
In the village of Bechet, some 900 people have fled their houses, many made from mud bricks, (((that must have proved helpful))) and rescuers were rushing out hundreds more after a nearby dike burst.
A police helicopter saved 11 people trapped on isolated plots of land near Bechet surrounded by swollen waters who had initially refused to leave. Further downstream in villages of Oltina and Spantov, authorities said evacuations had stopped as the Danube receded from century highs, but soldiers kept reinforcing flood defences using bulldozers and trucks in case water levels rise again.
(...)
The floods forced hundreds of Romanians to spend Orthodox Easter Sunday – a closely observed holiday in the Balkans – in a bleak refugee camp away from their flooded village with little hope of returning home.
(...)
"The situation is extremely critical," Gyula Reich, Environment and Water Ministry spokesman told Reuters. "The rivers are retreating slowly. It could take another 10-12 days and meanwhile the dikes are getting soaked."
The Balkans are still reeling from devastating floods which killed scores of people and left thousands homeless last summer. The Danube originates in Germany and flows through or forms borders with 10 countries before emptying into the Black Sea.
(((You remember my being in Australia, two weeks ago? They just
got whacked by the most powerful cyclone ever to hit Australia.
Luckily the storm missed the major local city and merely devastated
the natural world.)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36139/story.htm
(((And, uh, the storm shut down the local uranium mine. Climate change and the nuclear-power angle.)))
'Production at the world's second biggest uranium mine, Energy Resources of Australia Ltd.'s Ranger mine, 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Darwin, was suspended late Monday ahead of the cyclone.
"We don't appear to have any structural or infrastructure damage at the mine site itself at Ranger, but there is a lot of debris, with trees blocking roadways," an ERA spokeswoman told Reuters on Tuesday.
