Budapest mayor: City institutions ready to protect capital from flood
The Budapest city council’s companies and institutions are well-prepared for flood protection work and to protect the capital, Mayor Gergely Karácsony said on Sunday.
Karácsony said on Facebook that the lower embankments on both the Buda and Pest sides of the river will be closed to traffic from Monday evening, and he asked the owners of cars parked there to move their vehicles. A four-kilometre clay dyke will be built along the Romai embankment of the river in northern Budapest, he added.
Photo: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert
Karácsony said the city’s Margaret Island will be protected with sandbags, adding that this will be done with the help of machines so no volunteers are needed for the time being. He said the largest flood of the past ten years was forecast to reach Budapest and it is expected to last long because raining continues on the Danube’s water catchment areas.
President wishes much strength for flood protection efforts
President Tamás Sulyok wished “perseverance and much strength to those working for services involved in flood protection, their helpers and volunteers” in a Facebook message on Sunday.
Sulyok highlighted the participation of soldiers and people who are “already fighting a tough battle with the increasing water level”. He added that water management experts forecast record high water levels on the Carpathian Basin stretches of several rivers, and the flooding will soon reach Hungary.
Pintér: Flood protection on Danube, Leitha adequate
The interior ministry is organising the flood protection on the Danube and Leitha rivers adequately, Interior Minister Sándor Pintér said in Győr, in north-western Hungary, on Sunday.
Forecasts indicate that the water levels of the Danube and the Leitha will nearly reach or even exceed the peaks registered in the flood of 2013, Pintér told a press conference, adding that major defence efforts were needed on the two rivers.
The government has instructed the interior ministry to organise the flood defence work, Pintér said. The national disaster management and national water management authorities have marked the areas where the rising water levels can cause emergency situations, such as the need to raise the height of the dams or evacuate the locals, he said.
“I’m convinced that there won’t be any evacuations because we can confine the water between the adequate barriers,” he added. The European Union is also supporting the defence efforts via the Copernicus emergency management service, he said.
The Hungarian Armed Forces has some 17,000 people ready to aid the flood defence work, he said. Pintér also said that the assistance of the public may again be needed just as in 2013, adding, at the same time, that those who decide to help should only go where the disaster and water management authorities ask.
Orbán on flood protection: ‘It will be hard but we will manage’
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in a Facebook video on Sunday, said flood protection efforts in Hungary over the coming days “will be hard but we will manage”.
“I’m standing at the Romai embankment in Budapest right now, an area that will be impassable a day from now,” the prime minister said in the video. “By tomorrow, the large mass of water that is expected to arrive will be where my head is right now, and two metres above that in another day or two. But the water management experts are confident because they say the highest water level won’t exceed the record high.”
“They say that if we could handle the highest-ever flood levels then we can handle a lower one as well,” Orbán said. He said the three critical areas were the Szigetkoz island plain in north-western Hungary, the Danube Bend and Budapest. The technical liaison officers are in place and will be the ones helping the volunteers “to make sure that all the goodwill shown by the people in the protection efforts is arranged in a meaningful way”, he added.
The prime minister said all the technical and financial resources needed for the protection efforts were in place. Orbán said Interior Minister Sandor Pinter is in charge of disaster management, adding he was certain that the minister would do a good job handling the flood protection efforts. “And he’s got the government, and — if need be — the prime minister behind him. It will be hard but we will manage,” Orbán added.
Storm uproots trees in Western Hungary
Gale-force winds blowing across Hungary have brought down trees, broken tree branches and damaged power lines west of the Danube, the national disaster management authority (OKF) said on Sunday.
Firefighters responded to more than 170 calls for help on Saturday concerning damage caused by the storm, such as uprooted trees and fallen branches, OKF said, adding that emergency responses continued into Sunday morning. Fallen trees caused delays on multiple railway lines, Mávinform said. Disaster management staff who spoke to MTI’s correspondents made no mention of injuries in any of the counties. In Szombathely, in Vas County, the storm also damaged traffic lights.
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