Updates from the Balkan deluge:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/us-balkans-flood-idUKBREA4G03P20140518
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/us-balkans-flood-idUSBREA4H04B20140518
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/uk-balkans-flood-idUKKBN0DY09X20140518
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/us-balkans-flood-idUKBREA4G03P20140518
More than 20 dead, thousands evacuated in Bosnia, Serbia floods
BY MARKO DJURICA
OBRENOVAC, Serbia Sun May 18, 2014 1:23am BST
Reuters) - More than 20 people have been killed in the worst floods in more than a century in Serbia and Bosnia, authorities said on Saturday, with thousands evacuated from towns still under threat from rising rivers.
The death toll in Bosnia alone reached 19, including nine found on Saturday when waters receded from the northeastern town of Doboj.
Thousands of volunteers joined soldiers, police and fire-fighters in building flood barriers made of sandbags in the Serbian capital Belgrade and the western town of Sabac.
The River Sava hit its highest-recorded level in Serbia, the army said, rising at a rate of three centimeters (one inch) per hour after several days of the heaviest rainfall in almost 120 years.
Three people were confirmed dead in Serbia by Friday, and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said there were more fatalities in the town of Obrenovac, 30 km (18 miles) southwest of Belgrade, where soldiers deployed huge amphibious vehicles to rescue hundreds of people crammed into a primary school.
Three people were confirmed dead in Serbia by Friday, and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said there were more fatalities in the town of Obrenovac, 30 km (18 miles) southwest of Belgrade, where soldiers deployed huge amphibious vehicles to rescue hundreds of people crammed into a primary school.
Authorities in Serbia said they would not give a death toll for Obrenovac, a town of some 30,000 people, until the waters had receded and the extent of the damage was clear.
A Reuters photographer said the entire town center was submerged under two to three meters (seven to 10 feet) of water.
Tens of thousands of homes in Serbia were cut off from electricity and around 150,000 in Bosnia, where Doboj suffered the most.
"It was especially difficult in Doboj because the flood waters acted as a tsunami, three to four meters high. No one could have resisted," said Gojko Vasic, police chief in Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic.
In Belgrade, residents donated food, clothes and bedding. Police appealed for more boats. A steady rain fell on Saturday and more was forecast for Sunday.
WAIT AND HOPE
"Now we have to sit and wait, to wait for that next wave and to hope," Vucic told a joint news conference with Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.
In the Bosnian border town of Bijeljina, authorities said they would evacuate 10,000 people. More than 15,000 have already been evacuated in Serbia.
"We left behind the car, motorcycle, tools, all our furniture, valuables," said Dragana Ilic, an Obrenovac resident evacuated to a shelter in Belgrade. "We just grabbed our mobile phones and left. All our IDs were left behind. The whole house is under water."
In Bosnia, helicopters evacuated people from the northern towns of Samac and Modrica and trucks and bulldozers carried food to the hardest hit areas.
About 1,000 people, including babies, pregnant women, invalids and the elderly were evacuated from the region of Zeljezno Polje in central Bosnia, where hundreds of homes were destroyed in landslides.
"I think we'll never be able to return to our village," local Muslim imam Zuhdija Ridzal told Reuters by telephone from Zeljezno Polje. "It has disappeared".
A Reuters cameraman said people were still leaving the area by foot. The roofs of houses and cars poked out from under mud, trees and rocks.
"Only three houses survived, all others were buried, totally gone," said one villager, Ragib Menzilovic.
On Friday, Serbia's state-run power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) trimmed output at its largest hydro power plant, Djerdap 1, on the Danube river by a quarter.
It also closed down 1,650 MW in capacity of its largest coal-fired power plant Nikola Tesla (TENT), on top of a 10 percent cut in total output a day before.
Flooding of the Kolubara, the Danube and the Sava rivers brought down cables and transformer stations, soaked coal depots that feed the power plant and caused a fire inside the Kolubara complex which had been shuttered since Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/us-balkans-flood-idUSBREA4H04B20140518
Balkans flooding threatens Serbia power plants, 37 dead
BY FEDJA GRULOVIC AND ZELJKO DEBELNOGIC
KOSTOLAC, Serbia/DOBOJ, Bosnia Sun May 18, 2014 12:33pm EDT
(Reuters) - Soldiers, police and villagers battled to protect power plants in Serbia from rising flood waters on Sunday as the death toll from the Balkan region's worst rainfall in more than a century reached 37.
Twelve bodies were recovered from the worst-hit Serbian town of Obrenovac, 30 km (18 miles) southwest of the capital, Belgrade, but the number was likely to rise as waters receded.
"The situation is catastrophic," Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told reporters.
Hundreds of soldiers and residents scrambled to raise sandbag barriers around the perimeter of the Kostolac power plant east of Belgrade, where a Reuters cameraman said waters from the swollen River Mlava, a tributary to the much larger River Danube, had come to within a kilometer.
Workers at the plant joined the effort, digging up a road in a bid to divert waters that threatened to flood nearby coal mines. The Kostolac plant supplies 20 percent of Serbia's electricity needs.
Russian cargo planes carrying boats, generators and food joined rescue teams from around Europe and thousands of local volunteers in evacuating people and building flood defenses after the River Sava, swollen by days of torrential rain, burst its banks.
Rains eased and flood waters receded on Sunday in some of the worst-hit areas of Serbia and Bosnia, but the Sava was forecast to rise further. Thousands of people have been displaced.
Serbia's EPS power utility said a fresh flood wave also threatened Serbia's largest power plant, the Nikola Tesla in Obrenovac.
Flooding had already cut Serbian power generation by 40 percent, forcing the cash-strapped country to boost imports.
"More and more water is getting closer but for the time being the sandbag defense barriers are holding," Tanjug news agency quoted Kostolac general manager Dragan Jovanovic as saying.
"TSUNAMI"
The economic impact of the floods is likely to be huge, devastating the agricultural sector vital to both the Serbian and Bosnian economies.
Vucic said a fire and flooding of surface mines on Friday at the Kolubara coal-fired power plant southwest of Belgrade had caused damage of at least 100 million euros ($137 million).
"These are the kind of waters not seen in 1,000 years, let alone 100," Vucic told a televised cabinet session.
He said 12 bodies had been recovered from Obrenovac after waters dropped from a peak of some three meters (10 feet). At least five more were reported dead elsewhere in Serbia.
In Bosnia, 19 people were confirmed dead, with nine bodies recovered from the northeastern town of Doboj after what the regional police chief described as a "tsunami" of water.
A Reuters cameraman at the scene said half the town was still submerged. Soldiers delivered food and medical supplies by truck, boat and bulldozer. Cranes lifted medical workers into some homes and removed stranded residents from others.
Zeljka Cvijanovic, prime minister of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic, compared the devastation to Bosnia's 1992-95 war, in which 100,000 people died. "The damage is such that we cannot recall even after the war," she told reporters.
In Croatia, the government said one person had died and two were missing in flooded villages in an eastern corner of the country near Bosnia and Serbia. The army used amphibious vehicles to help evacuate some 3,000 people.
"I carried my kids out on my back, then waited 12 hours to be rescued myself," said 40-year-old Obrenovac resident Dragan Todorovic, who spent the night in a Belgrade sports hall with dozens of other families. "The house was new, built two years ago for 100,000 euros. What now?"
($1 = 0.7297 Euros)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/uk-balkans-flood-idUKKBN0DY09X20140518
Russia, Europe join volunteers in Balkan flood relief effort
BY FEDJA GRULOVIC AND ZELJKO DEBELNOGIC
OBRAC Serbia/DOBOJ Bosnia Sun May 18, 2014 12:40pm BST
(Reuters) - Russian cargo planes and rescue teams from around Europe on Sunday joined huge volunteer aid efforts in swathes of Serbia and Bosnia where at least 24 people have died in the worst floods in over a century.
Rains eased and waters receded in the worst-hit areas of central and western Serbia and northeastern Bosnia, but the River Sava was forecast to continue rising in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
The Sava burst its banks after days of torrential flooding in the ex-Yugoslav republics, flooding towns and cutting power to tens of thousands of homes. Thousands of soldiers and volunteers worked through the night to build a sandbag barrier five kilometres (3 miles) long to protect Serbia's Kostolac coal-fired power plant, which currently covers 20 percent of Serbia's electricity needs.
But waters from the River Mlava broke through early on Sunday, threatening the Drmno coal mine deposits near the Kostolac plant.
"The army, police, volunteers and Kostolac employees are using all mechanisation and are piling up sandbags to slow the river flow and prevent it from entering the power generation system," Alma Muslibegovic, a spokeswoman for Serbia's EPS power distributor, told Reuters.
Flooding had already cut Serbian power generation by 40 percent, forcing the cash-strapped Balkan country to boost imports.
Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said a fire and flooding of surface mines at the 1,300 megawatt (MW) Kolubara coal-fired power plant southwest of Belgrade had caused damage of "at least 100 million euros (81.4 million pounds)".
Authorities say the economic impact of the floods will be huge, devastating the agricultural sector vital to both the Serbian and Bosnian economies.
"The danger today is less than it was yesterday, but we have to control the Sava as much as we can," Vucic told a televised cabinet session. "These are the kind of waters not seen in 1,000 years, let alone 100."
VOLUNTEERS
Vucic said two bodies had been recovered from the worst-hit Serbian town of Obrenovac, some 30 km southwest of Belgrade, the Tanjug news agency reported.
Predrag Maric, the Interior Ministry's head of emergency situations, said the death toll in Serbia so far was five, with one person missing. The toll was expected to rise.
In Obrenovac, members of a rafting club from the southern Serbian town of Raska joined rescue efforts, evacuating elderly men and women on their backs after days spent without electricity in flooded homes.
In Bosnia, 19 people were confirmed dead by Saturday, with nine bodies recovered from the northeastern town of Doboj after what the regional police chief described as a "tsunami" of water 3-4 metres (10-13 feet) high.
A Reuters cameraman at the scene said half the town was still submerged. Bosnian soldiers distributed food and medical supplies by truck, boat and bulldozer. Cranes lifted medical workers into the top floors of some homes and removed stranded residents from others.
On Sunday, two Russian Ilyushin-26 cargo planes landed in Serbia carrying food, generators and rescue boats.
Rescue teams, humanitarian aid, water pumps and generators have arrived from Russia and several European Union member states, including Britain, Germany and Austria. Support has also come from Serbia and Bosnia's fellow ex-Yugoslav republics.
Some 20,000 people have been evacuated in Serbia and at least 13,000 more in Bosnia. Donations of clothes and food poured into collection centres in Belgrade.
"I carried my kids out on my back, then waited 12 hours to be rescued myself," said 40-year-old Obrenovac resident Dragan Todorovic, who spent the night in a Belgrade sports hall with dozens of other families. "The house was new, built two years ago for 100,000 euros. What now?"
