The floods in Slovakia have now taken a much larger toll than anyone could have expected. The extent of damage and heartache throughout the country, but primarily in the east, is beyond words, with whole villages reminiscent more of an earthquake zone. In many villages the entire infrastructure has been destroyed beyond repair. Roads have been upturned and homes have either been sucked into the ground or split in two as the over-saturated soil can no longer hold them up. As one man wept about how his three and a half years working in the UK away from his family to build a house that now lies in ruins, the question has to be asked if enough is being done about what is slowly becoming an annual occurrence.
It is true that natural disasters like this cannot be predicted, but surely we should have learned from previous years that they can at least be expected. In many cases it would be enough to create run-off trenches to bypass villages, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough cash in the country’s coffers for such ‘local’ needs, as our taxes go towards feeding more important things like overpriced and oftentimes dubious tenders. Any money that does make it to local government also seems to be soaked up on other ‘necessities’. I wonder how certain people can sleep at night, knowing that others now have nowhere to sleep. Is there a link between corruption and natural disasters of this kind? Well, that is up to you to decide.