Orbán: Hungary can breathe easier in 5 days

Hungary can breathe easier after five more “difficult days”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a press conference on flood protection in Budapest on Saturday.

“On the ninth day of defence, we’ve passed the halfway point,” he said, adding that there were five more days to go in a state of heightened readiness.

Photo: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán

On Friday, flood defences were carried out along 755km, one kilometer more than the previous day.

He added that water levels remained below those of the 2013 flood, and protection measures were being implemented at a “calm and steady pace”.

Orbán noted that today the River Danube would peak in Budapest, and attention would thenceforth focus on settlements downstream from Budapest.

He warned that flood-protection leaders must not allow work to slacken, because most bank-bursts, accidents and flooding generally took place as the waters receded.

It would take just a “lackadaisical” day or two to ruin the successful work thus far, he added.

On Friday, the protective “backbone” slipped at Pilismarót, and divers were successfully deployed to strengthen the defences in a 16-hour operation.

At Vác, sewage manholes burst due to the high water pressure, “but we managed to contain this”, he said.

The focus in the following period will be settlements downstream from Budapest, he said, mentioning Ercsi, Kisapostag, Dunaföldvár and Paks, adding that protection measures were 100 percent ready.

Asked about how much money Hungary may receive from the European Commission’s 10 billion euro outlay for central Europe’s flood-related measures, Orbán said Hungarians had long experience of how they must rely on themselves to solve their own problems, and “for now we’ve managed, we’ve stood our ground and protected the country”.

“We’ll believe it when we see it,” he said. “If money comes, it comes, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t; we can do without,” he said. “Every kind of help is welcome … but we shouldn’t hold out our hat like a measly beggar,” he added. Orbán noted that Hungary has spent 2 billion euros on protecting the EU’s external border, “yet for this, the EU hasn’t given us a single penny”.

Regarding tasks ahead, he said great vigilance in flood defence work would have to be shown right up to the wave reaching the southern town of Baja on Monday, and the biggest dangers would be over by next Wednesday-Thursday.

The prime minister said it would be unfair to compare Hungary’s situation with neighbouring countries, where there have been fatalities and general paralysis, and he noted that Hungary had had more time to prepare. Referring to the leader of the opposition Tisza Party, Péter Magyar, and his critical comments of the government’s communications about the number of volunteers carrying out flood defence, Orbán said Magyar would do better to focus on the work ahead instead of entering into disputes in “bad taste”.

“The more volunteers, the better” he said, adding that statistics on people engaged in flood defence were handled by the operational staff each morning, and he quoted numbers accordingly. Orbán thanked everyone for their work. Also he noted that flood defence in 2013 cost 19.6 billion forints, and so far this year the sum was “well below that”.

Read all our reports on flooding in Hungary HERE.

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