Prague, Jan 14 (CTK) – Dozens of kilometres of anti-flood dykes and barriers have been built in the Czech Republic in reaction to repeated disastrous floods in the past 20 years, but still almost 180,000 Czechs live in areas that are unprotected and endangered by surging water, Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.
These people’s houses stand along the streams where overflowing water may be dangerously fast and deep, in areas that are labelled “unacceptably risky” by experts, the paper writes.
If a hundred-year flood came, water would flood an even larger area with about 400,000 inhabitants, the daily says.
In late December, the cabinet approved a six-year plan to reduce the number of flood-endangered households. It projects over 130 anti-flood measures across the country, including weir repairs, river bed widening, and the construction of dykes and dams, MfD writes.
One of the municipalities where a number of inhabitants face an unacceptable risk is Brantice near Krnov, north Moravia. The whole valley with people’s houses and an elementary school is a risky zone. Its anti-flood protection will be secured by the Nove Herminovy new water reservoir and barriers along the Opava River, Petr Brezina, from the Odra River basin management, is quoted as saying.
New anti-flood measures are also to protect, for example, villages and towns on the confluence of the Labe (Elbe) and the Vltava rivers, and, more northwards, on the confluence of the Labe and the Ohre, a chain of municipalities on the lower reaches of the Berounka River, south of Prague, and a number of municipalities on the upper reaches of the Elbe and its tributaries in northeast Bohemia, the daily writes.
A total of 216 endangered municipalities with 100,000 inhabitants of unacceptably risky areas lie along the Morava River and its tributary Dyje (Thaya) in Moravia, its writes.
The government-proposed measures include the recommendation that about a thousand towns in the risky areas acquire and modernise their local alert and warning system of devices measuring the precipitation and water level, complemented by a network of alarm sirens and loudspeakers.
Apart from specifying the most endangered inhabited localities, the government document names the historical sights that would be inundated by a hundred-year flood. They include the Veltrusy chateau north of Prague, the Terezin baroque fortress, north Bohemia, the St Vitus church in Cesky Krumlov, south Bohemia, the Slavonic medieval hillfort in Mikulcice, south Moravia, the monastery in Olomouc, north Moravia, and others, the daily writes.
