>any of you with friends/correspondents in the area, and those who know >Michael P and his co-workers, can cross your fingers & hope ... cuz it >sounds like they need all the help they can get to keep from >*literally* >going down the drain in some areas over there. :<
Some people really need help here, but not us. Arachne Labs are on the hill, and Inway server room where home.arachne.cz is located too. And it seems that local firemen, army and police mastered the situation. Center of Prague was proteced from floods thanks to portable flood-bariers, installed just recently (last year). They were up to 2 meters high, and water just started to pour over them before it stoped. Charles Bridge survived the floods too (it didn't survied other floods in previous centuries, so it was anyway already rebuilt many times since middle-ages) After all, we are not Bangladesh ;-) But it is true, that the damage is huge, but loss of lives is (so far) surprisingly low, compared to other floods of such size, even in our country in 1997. Material damage includes cca 50% of Prague underground lines - although they were ready for floods, no one expected such huge floods. In other parts of country appeared temporary lakes up to 30 km accross. There was floowing much more than 5000 m^3/second (5 million litres every second), and this is comparable to rivers like Missisipi, I guess ;-) (Donau normaly has about 1-2000 thousands, IMHO, and it is the largest European river). In Vltava, there are normaly 150 m^3/second. I am really surprised, that all the bridges in Prague seem to survive. Situation was much worse in countryside, however.
