Flood situation worsens in southern Poland

No, I don't mean reclaiming land or building below sea level. For your information, we also have created bufferzones (Artificial lakes.) and side canals. You didn't think we were pumping it out all at once did you? No, we need to redirect the water first. We have a word for it, we call it Water Management. I really think you guys should think about it, because I've seen some pictures, and it's not only caused by rivers, but also by the heavy rainfall in some areas. (Which means the water can't go anywhere.) I don't think it will stop raining in the future, so that's why.

Most of the UK will be a flood plain in a 100 years time :D

Im sure Poland will be fine..They've started to evacuate people and if they take emergency measures they should be able to limit the damage

I think we'll be living 50 meters below sea-level by then? (We're actually thinking about creating floating cities, and something tells me we would actually be able to pull it off, so I'm not exactly worried about the future!)

:)

We have a large canal system, we have sea front defences, we have 100s of reservoirs and lots of dams, but we also have moutains and valleys and large rivers which makes our landscape more difficult than Hollands to manage, we are also an Island and are situated geographically so that we will always generally have poor weather conditions.


We have sunshine here and whilst its been the coldest May on record, its been dry...25 degrees and sunshine on Friday ;0)

Its been 13 years since Poland's last really bad flooding, hopefully it wont become a frequent occurrence..

The rainfall causes the rivers to burst their banks.


The damage is extensive, two banked walls to the Wisla have burst in Krakow, flooding streets.


Just look at the dates of this thread, every year for the last three.
And again this is the biggest one in recorded history for Krakow.
It is Wisla is dropping by something like 5cm an hour, yesterday it was rising 8cm an hour.
So it looks like we are over the worst of it, touch wood.

Ofcourse it does, but the rainfall also causes saturation of the ground, lakes, canals, buffers, etc!


I agree, this is serious.

What happened, from my perspective, was I couldn't cut the grass (my indicator) cause it was raining a little everyday for about a week. The ground became saturated and then the heavy rain fell and was not absorbed but flooded the whole place. I have really never seen anything like it before in my life.

P.S. The Dutch are the leaders in water management and it really needs to be managed here.

I just called my parents in Kraków. Cellars in their block are flooded. They live near Vistula river. My mother was to attend the funeral of her brother today but was too afraid to leave the house. I'm worried.

I am sorry to hear about your uncle, Bzibzioh.
The river is going down now, 5cm an hour.
Meteorologists say we have seen the worst of it.
And although the banks of the river were not adequate. I have seen thousands of people , mainly fire-fighters, working tirelessly round the clock to insure the safety of the people.

I hope this lays some of your fear to rest.

Well, now you have, and I hope that little insight has been an eye-opener. (Because it's the main reason, believe it or not.)


Yes, and that's what I mean. (It's usually the condition of the groundwater which causes flooding, and not the river itself, as many people might believe.) I think the Polish shouldn't be too proud to ask for assistance from our little frog country somewhere in the near future. (We've helped the Americans aswell after the flooding of New Orleans happened!) I'm not trying to sound arrogant here, but our country has been studying this subject for centuries. I doubt the people of Poland have the same kind of experience and expertise available to them.

:)


I've heard they're doing everything they can, and a lot of people are definitely looking after eachother. I know it's easy for me to say, but you don't have to worry yourself too much!

:)

Thank you, Seannie. You are very kind.


I really hope everything will be over soon as I'm to take a train from Vienna to Kraków in 11 days. Are trains going without interruptions?

They expect the flood to reach Brandenburg soon. :(

At the moment there are many interruptions to all forms of transport services, including rail.
Today is supposed to be the last of the rain but it will be a while before everything is running properly again. The damage is extensive.


From where is that coming from?
I have only being paying attention to Slovakia and Poland.

The flood is leaving Malapolska today but it is a long way from here to the sea.
At least people will have had time for some sort of preparation.
Tomorrow it should be in Warsaw, places north of Krakow are being flooded.
The good news is that, the further north it goes, the more flood plains it has and the less intense it will become so there ought to be much less flooding.

Pride has got nothing to do with it. Of course you can do many things to prevent flooding and I'm sure NL experience will come in useful around the world in the future. But it costs money - lots of it. Suggesting that Poles build artificial ponds and canals will not be a cheap as letting natural flood plains to flood - as nature intended. Pity the poor fools who build on flood plains, but .not. .much.

The first wave is expected at the Oder, coming from Poland...

It's a matter of priorities. Ofcourse it will cost a lot, but what will all the damage cost you eventually if you're willing to take a gamble? I mean, nature will always find a way, and the chances it will flood exactly as predicted will be very small, unless you master your water. There will always be unforeseen circumstances, but applying water management will give you much more certainty. Even then you'll have to adapt sometimes. I mean, we might be able to predict the weather for weeks to come, but who says it won't be raining even harder within 60 years or so? It's not only the rivers which cause flooding, and who says the rain will only fall on the natural flood plains? You need a controlled redirection of water somehow, but I guess that's all future talk.

Venice beat everyone to it and if they can pull it off im sure the rest of the world can!

But it is rather profound the scenes that i am seeing in pictures and videoclips but one about Poland is it can overcome over any difficulty.

spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,695613,00.html

Venice doesn't float actually. It has been built on pillars. (And it's also slowly sinking?) So yes, I hope we will beat you to it!

;)


I'm sure they're pretty resilient by nature.

:)

Obviously, a global carbon tax is necessary to reverse this warming trend. ;)

We have some drama here. Wroclaw is getting ready for the flood.

Some areas have already had their water cut off, others have had power cuts, some both.

Some villages are seeing water rising near their homes.

I've never seen such panic buying for water. There is no bottle water anywhere.

When I went to work the river was up a metre or so. Five hours later it was up another metre.

We will find out if it's all talk or a reality in the morning.

To add to the drama, we are expecting an eight metre wave. The flood of 1997 was a six metre wave.

Everybody got insurance there now Wroclaw?

Or do we have to bail them out again? I already paid last time :((

I can't speak for others. In this house/flat we don't expect any problems. We are on the first floor. In 1997 the flood water stopped about five metres from the house.

Much of the water doesn't come over the riverbank. I comes up through the ground. It's all sand here. The water table is very high here, even under normal circumstances.

In '97 this place was fine. Moving the car to a garage tomorrow morning. Google Earth does a good job with elevation, hopefully we'll be ok on our little island...

If tomorrow goes all '97, I'm loading the cats up and flying to prague...

I've just been speaking to someone in the know. The wave is expected to be 40cm lower than last time. Not eight metres as has been reported.

Plus, the water defence system has been improved since then (1997)

Gazeta


GazetaSo it looks like it will be nowhere near as bad as 97' for Wroclaw and the rumour was that if people fill up their bathtubs and sinks, not only will you have clean drinking water but you will lessen the amount of water and therefore decrease the flood.

This is the problem with rumours, they cause panic and that causes problems.

I nearly missed my flight on Tuesday it took forever to get from Zawoja to the airport due to alot of road closures one crash and daft twats stopping on the side of the motorway to take pictures of the flooding river.

Well, I'm sure there's nothing you folks can't manage? Oh, and we have plenty of rainy days too, and it's always storming where I live! (Near the coast.)


Same here, I might actually go to the beach! (But you never really know for certain with the kind of weather predictions we're having!)


You know, I really don't want to be a prophet of doom all the time, but with the way things are going with our climate, I think it will happen more frequenty.


I agree, people should inform themselves properly before they start yelling, because this is pretty serious business, and I could understand it's easy to freak people out!

as i said in my last post.

but it is also a fact that parts of wroclaw are already flooded.


not sure if that's directed at me. it's the media that's causing the panic.

as i've seen this all before i'll check the river later and give you an update.

it is true that no sandbagging seems to be taking place in the low lying area of ostrow tumski, a place of historical importance.

a big part of wroclaw can be saved because there are valves in the dykes, which can be opened to flood the countryside. if this happens some villages will suffer to a greater or lesser extent.

I was backing up your post with what I had read in the newspapers.