C Z E C H S P E C I A L R E P O R T
Picture swimming the street where you were raised while canoes glide by with neighbors asking if you've seen their street. And the whole scene stinks of the city's sewage which has drained into the flood.
Such was the fate of Richard Korinek of the Czech Center for Community Work, as he approached his parents' home in Olomouc. "Half a meter of water filled the first floor and the basement was completely flooded," he said.
Electricity and phones went dead for days, and after waters receded, residents heaved belongings from their flooded basements to the street. "It was as if the houses began to vomit," said Korinek of the hundreds of putrid hills drying in the sun.
Korinek admits that Olomouc fared better than many other communities along the Morava, because of the wetland upstream which served as a floodplain. "South of Olomouc, thousands of pigs drowned and had to be burnt," he said. And while only a few houses collapsed in Olomouc, villages downstream were ravaged, especially those situated in the floodplain surrounding the forks of the Morava and Becva Rivers.
In the village of Troubky near the Becva, population 1,200, nine residents died while nearly half the village collapsed. "The Mayor announced that a flood was coming 10 minutes before it hit," said Korinek's colleague, Roman Haken. "But people misunderstood thinking that the water was running out, so they filled their bathtubs." It wasn't long before many of the village's homes made from non-fired bricks dissolved and collapsed. Two months later, a massive hill of wood and stone stands at the edge of the village.
In neighboring Bochor, 80 percent of the village's 360 homes were damaged and 65 completely destroyed by the flooded Becva River - located six kilometers away.
"Nobody imagined that something like this could happen," said Vlasta Pochyla, Bochor's Mayor. "But I don't think it's the government's fault. They've only been around for seven years and it's a long-term process to fight with nature." Pochlya believes that the answer lies in recreating the area's natural floodplains, especially those lost to an airport built in the 1950s. But the biggest concern is the state of Bochor's remaining homes, many of which are still drying and which may freeze and crack as winter approaches.