It seems that we survived the floods ok.
Me and Arachne Labs office and our server was absolutely safe all the time.
Prague is city located on many hills, and huge parts of the city are
located hundered or more meters above level of river Vltava. Only Old
Town and other parts of city close to river were flooded.
I am personaly working on removing the damage caused by floods, but I
can't even proudly say that I am volunteering in center of Prague, and
helping to save lives or historical buildings or so: my situation is far
less dramatic. My parents own small recreation house (cabin,
"cottage"...) near river Berounka, cca 20 km up the stream from Prague.
We moved most of the equipment upstairs, but there are still tons of
stinky mud everywhere, on the garden, downstairs, and so. So I am
helping them to clean up the mess. (small holiday houses like this are
quite popular among inhabitants of Prague, because in Prague most people
live blocks of flats (appartments), therea are not many residential
areas with family houses and gardens; many of them are located close to
river Berounka, which is joining Vltava at the edge of Prague. Still,
for many people in Prague this means only damage to their luxury, not
serious threat. Of course, entire city quarter - Karlin - had to be
evacutated and this means tens of thousands temporarily homeless, and
probably thousands having their appartments permanently damaged (4
meters of water in this part of city...)
Talking about victims of floods.. well, at least 3 of those 11 or 13 or
how many victims were simply victims of their own stupidity, not victims
of floods. Consider this: one girl drowned when trying to ride flooded
river Berounka on raft with friends! Of course in the situatuion, when
danger was already publicly announced! Another victim was drunken man
carelessly walking in water, and another victim is even more stupid:
someone watching the boat threating one bridge on river Labe, which had
to be destroyed by explosives. Of course, people were told to go far
away, but this one opted to watch the explosion, and died. Many people
behaved stupid during floods. Still, situation is much better than in
1997, when in another part of our countery, Moravia, about 50 people
died mainly because they refused to leave their homes when warned. Such
a big floods like in 1997 or this year are not common in my country, and
smaller floods were usualy prevented by system of dams for last 50
years. Such big floods in Central Europe may be related to greenhouse
effect.
I will publish some photo-report on my Czech-language e-zine
www.teckacz.cz soon ("teckacz" means "dot cz", and running this e-zine
is one of my current semi-professional hobbies ;-)
I am just trying tu figure out why I am not receiving arachne-digest,
although I am still subscribed.
xCh.
