Flash floods have been causing severe damages to whole villages in the past few days, and there are fears that there could be more trouble to come as rains prevail.
Many villages, mostly along the Carpathian mountain arch, have seen their whole infrastructure destroyed by the merciless onslaught of rushing water as 10 cm of torrential rains caused immediate flooding in various spots throughout Slovakia. Among the worst hit were residents of the village of Pila in West Slovakia, who in addition to damaged property and roads, had to deal also with an outage in electricity, gas and fresh drinking water.
In many places bridges and roads have been washed away, with an estimated 9,000 people being made homeless. Parliamentary chairman Richard Sulik made the government building in Casta available to local residents, as it is equipped with around 200 beds and so will provide temporary shelter. A gesture, at least, but the building has no power or water supply at the moment thanks to the rains, and even the access road has been damaged.
PM Iveta Radicova made a trip to some of the worst hit places, along with the ministers of environment, interior and defence. Interior minister Daniel Lipsic stated that as much assistance as possible would be given to help the clean-up, but also that in future the emergency services will be better prepared and equipped to deal with similar situations, as the frequency and force of floods in Slovakia has been on the rise for the past few years.
I was looking in Casta village at buying a small weekend house, a few weeks ago. Thankfully the selling Slovak tried to increase his asking price by 10,000 euro when he heard me speaking in English to my wife . I declined his offer of sale . Let’s hope he is now left with a soggy and worthless pile of bricks.