Balkans struggle to contain rising Danube

EMERGENCY crews and volunteers yesterday struggled to keep embankments and sand barriers from giving way amid record flooding along the Danube and its tributaries in northern Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans.

In Romania, the government ordered controlled flooding of thousands of acres of farmland to stave off threats to communities along the Danube.

In north-western Bulgaria, the Danube flooded most of the industrial zone in the city of Vidin, with water levels soaring to 380 inches this weekend.

An emergency tent camp for 1,200 people was being set up just outside the city.

Some 40% of the nearby Romanian port city of Nikopol was under water, threatening to flood the pumping station and cut off fresh water supplies. Hundreds of people had left the city.

Although the water in Serbia was only rising slightly, in Belgrade - the republic’s capital, located on the confluence of the Sava River and the Danube - lower-lying streets were submerged. Parts of the city’s ancient fortress were also flooded.

Belgrade mayor Nenad Bogdanovic pledged that some 100 of the capital’s buildings damaged by the floods would be repaired and dozens of impoverished Gypsies, or Roma, evacuated from their shantytown along the Sava, would be taken care of.

Swollen by the spring snow melt and heavy rains, the Danube - Europe’s second longest river - has reached record highs in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Overnight, the level of the Danube near Veliko Gradiste, 60 miles east of Belgrade and close to the Romanian border, hit an all-time high of 380 inches.

Dozens of residents in the eastern town of Smederevo were evacuated to a refugee centre. Zvonko Kostic, a waterways official in Smederevo, said few Serbian towns and cities have the necessary machinery to fight floods around the clock.

In the northern Vojvodina province - Serbia’s breadbasket because of its wheat and corn production - the flooding and heavy rains have swelled Danube tributaries, completely submerging 25,000 acres of farmland and turning 500,000 acres more into mud and slush that could threaten crops.