Flooding has taken its toll on Romania

Bad weather alerts for Romania have come to an end and the situation is coming back to normal.

Corina Cristea, 11.07.2018, 12:41

After many days of code orange and even code red alerts for heavy downpours, thunderstorms and flooding, the situation in Romania is coming back to normal. The authorities are still assessing the damage, while some of the Interior Ministry’s rescue teams are still deployed to the affected areas in a bid to remove the effects of the flooding.

Rainfalls diminished as early as Tuesday night while the situation monitored by the Interior Ministry through its National Integrated Command Center no longer requires rescue operations for stranded persons. Unfortunately the bad weather in its last throes claimed more lives: a family in southeastern Romania was killed when the cart they were traveling in was swept by the waters. Two children, 5 and 7 years old, are also among the victims who have come to complete a grim picture created by the latest flooding, with hectares of farmland destroyed and desperate people who have seen their lifetime savings vanishing.

If central and eastern Romania bore the brunt of last week’s heavy rainfalls and flooding, the bad weather phenomena moved south wreaking havoc on several counties in the country’s south. Firefighters and gendarme troops fitted with the right equipment had been deployed to the affected regions in a bid to pump water out of houses, basements and courtyards and unclog the flooded wells. Rescue teams also intervened to clean the roads of fallen trees and debris.

The most affected regions, which required intervention, were in the southern counties of Arges, Gorj and Valcea, which also saw code red alerts for flooding. 150 residents from Valcea county were evacuated in a preventive move after river waters had broken through the protection dam. In another prevention move, gendarmes and firefighters have built six provisional dams in Sibiu county, in central Romania while construction works are underway for a third suchlike dam in the eastern county of Bacau. Capital city Bucharest was also affected by heavy rainfalls, which clogged the city’s sewer system to create knee-deep puddles in some areas. The authorities intervened promptly to assist those affected and also applied for EU assistance.