>Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 13:53:20 +0000 >From: Michael Polak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: about floods in Czech Republic...
<snip> >Such big floods in Central Europe may be related to greenhouse >effect. Nobody here in Romania doubts about this. Some of the meteorologists here have already begun to issue alarming long term prognosises, in the light of the increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. There are some voices claiming that the Earth's atmosphere has become (again) unstable and, in the worst case, in 50 years from now we can expect to another glaciation. For the past two weeks dissaster struck ramdomly here in Romania. There were violent storms causing floods and/or landslides in various regions of the country. Floods have until now affected communities like villages and small towns almost everywhere, but AFAIK no big town has yet been hit by them. Noticeably, some important floods were caused in some places not by rivers overflowing, but by huge quantities of water coming down from the surrounding hills, as a result of violent deluges. A flood of this sort occured in a small town called Draganesti in the Olt county, about ten days ago and claimed several lives In a couple of minutes the water level came to be more than two meters high and most of the victims had never got the chance to get out of their houses, being drowned by the mud flow. What worries us most here is the increasing force of the storms. Almost all of them caused extensive damages. There were heavy rains and tremendous winds. In the evening of August 12th a tornado-like phoemenomen hit the village of Facaieni located in the plains of Baragan at about 300 km east of Bucharest. In minutes most of the houses had their roofs torn down. Several solid brick houses were entirely demolished. A bus loaded with people was lifted up into the air and thrown outside the road. The bus driver died in the event. Another two people died when the ceiling of their house fell down on them while the rest of the house was demolished by the wind. 18 more inhabitants of the village were injured during the storm. As a curiosity, several TV stations showed pictures of an old woman staring at a peach tree thrown by the wind in her backyard, declaring she could not figure out where that tree had come from, as no such trees had been growing there before the storm , neither in her yard, nor in any of her neighbours'. The meteorologists are still reluctant to admit that a tornado hit the village, as no tornado has ever been recorded here before, and these kind of phenomenons are by no means characteristic to these regions. By a strange coincidence, they say, the damages caused by the storm resembled the ones a tornado may had caused... but this particular wind wasn't a tornado. Anyway we're all fed up with these manifestations of mother nature unleashed, and worried about what will come next. -- Cristian Burneci
