Markéta Bibová and her brother were evacuated from Karlín when the neighborhood flooded last summer. If floods strike again this summer, the city might not be ready tocontain the deluge, according to some city planners and environmentalexperts. Damage to Prague could in some cases be even worse than therecord-breaking disaster of this past August, they say.
"If there are 15 meters [50 feet] of water, then that would probablymean the end of Karlín," said Josef Nosek, Prague 8 mayor.
City leaders working to prevent another calamity say Prague will bebetter prepared for the next major flood.
Critics and flood specialists, however, say the city has yet to producetangible new defenses or draft a new flood plan, and those plans alreadyin place will not take effect for several years. They also argue thatthe people in charge of flood prevention are the same ones whomismanaged the city's protection last summer.
Karlin, the worst-hit neighborhood in August, remains a seeminglyunsolvable problem. Because it spans a flood plain, city officials haveno way to protect it, said Prague Mayor Pavel Bém. Many of the area'sbuildings are still being dried from last year's flood, and nearly halfof Karlín's 25,000 residents have yet to return to their homes.
"We are still looking for the most effective way to protect Karlín," Bém said. The city is still putting together an analysis of the August floods, he said. Jan Haverkamp, campaign director for Greenpeace in theCzech Republic, said local authorities have moved too slowly to respondto the growing threat. "You've got to do something and not wait on athousand studies," said Haverkamp. "Studies are an alibi for not wantingto spend money. The [government] thinks because we had this flood, thechance of it happening again next year is less. That's not howstatistics work."
Preparations under way
But according to Bém, local officials not only take the risk seriously,but they also have already begun preparing for catastrophe.
FLOOD RELIEF
Efforts to protect Prague from future flooding:
- Construct seven flood barriers by 2004
- Improve forecasting with a 60 million Kc ($2 million) computer
- Improve the early-warning system
- Adopt unified forecasting standards to better monitor rivers
- Monitor dams more closely
Experts' suggestions:
- Deepen riverbeds
- Construct new dams and community-protection dikes
- Amend law to give hydrologists greater decision-making authorityduring a flood
- Do not build in low-lying areas
- Construct community-protection dykes.
So far, the city government has agreed to spend 1.4 billion Kc ($48million) to build seven flood barriers similar to the one that protectedOld Town last summer.
By this spring, planners expect to complete the first new barrier, inthe Kampa section of Malá Strana, hit hard by the floods in August. City officials expect to finish all seven by 2004.
Haverkamp is not impressed. "We now have floodwalls to protect thecity's vulnerable areas, but it is not a solution to the floodingproblem," he said. "To solve the problem, you need flood plains to keepmore water upstream."
As for the Prague metro system, Radovan Steiner, the city councilor incharge of transportation, said that no method exists to make the systemcompletely watertight.
Seventeen of the city's 51 stations closed due to the flood. The B lineis not expected to be fully operational until late March. Workers haverepaired previous construction flaws and have installed other newmeasures to bring the system up to code, including wall reinforcementsand a nearly complete overhaul of the electrical cable network. Afterlast year's flood, inspectors found many cables inadequately sealed andwalls far thinner than the required two-and-a-half meters (8 feet).
Steiner said those defects had seriously increased the damage to thesystem in August. The A line, for example, would have remained dry if awall hadn't broken to allow water to pour in from the B line, he said.
"The extent of flooding would have been smaller," Steiner said. "The Aline probably did not have to be flooded." But undetected constructiondefects could still surface, he said, and it remains impossible to buildfloodwalls tall enough to hold back waters around the Karlin metrostations.
Prompted by discovery of the construction defects, authorities said theymay charge one of the companies that helped build the metro withcriminal offenses. That investigation is still underway. František Laudat, a city councilor heading an official investigation into thecity's flood response, said that serious mismanagement marked manyaspects of the flood response.
System revised
City officials, meanwhile, are now at work to amend the metro flood planand prepare the system for the flood level witnessed last summer.
"I hope it never happens again," Steiner said. "If it does, I hope it isafter we finish these amendments."
Workers install new cables in a flood-damaged metro tunnel. Cityofficials say the subway is being prepared to resist high water levels.
The city has also worked closely with the Czech HydrometeorologicalInstitute (CHI) and the Vltava River Authority to improve rivermonitoring -- something Bem said was not handled well in August. In thedebate that followed the flooding, critics put much of the blame on theauthority, accusing it of allowing reservoirs to swell beyond control.
Ivan Obrusník, director of the CHI, said the institute has authorizedthe purchase of a 60 million Kc supercomputer, expected to arrive in twomonths, which will make flood forecasts up to eight times faster andmore precise.
Those efforts can also help other cities ravaged by flooding last year,from Usti nad Labem in north Bohemia to Cesky Krumlov in the south, thenation's most popular tourist destination after Prague.
In Ústi nad Labem, which suffered 200 million Kc in flood damage, thecity plans to install aluminum containment walls at a cost of a severalmillion crowns, said Radek Vonka, mayor of the city's central district.Plans have also begun for a dam, at a cost of 300 million Kc.
In all, the country plans to spend 4 billion Kc in flood-preventionefforts by 2005. After floods in 1997 that resulted in 5 billion Kc indamage, the country spent just 600 million Kc on prevention efforts.
Private developers have also begun to take into account the possibilityof flooding, said John Cowen, associate director of building structuresfor the London-based Halcrow Group. His engineering firm is currentlybuilding a commercial development on the Holesovice riverfront, withflood protection as an essential part of the design.Critics, however, say that current plans do not adequately address thecomprehensive range of risks posed by potential floods. They argue thatno proof exists that the Vltava river dams will fare any better the nexttime around, and environmentalists warn that the Spolana chemical plantnorth of Prague, located in a flood plain, represents a human tragedywaiting to happen.
In the last flood, 260 tons of mercury from Spolana washed downriver, Haverkamp said. Since then, he alleged, the plant has done nothing toprevent such a disaster from repeating itself. Jindřich Petrlík, who isin charge of monitoring toxics and waste for Arnika, a Prague-basedenvironmental group, said the plant has not measured the amount ofdioxin in the ground. "They did some improvements, but on the other handwe think Spolana is an unsafe facility," Petrlík said.
Plant spokesman Jan Martínek said anti-flood barriers have been put inplace and the warning system has been upgraded. Martínek said thatdioxin was in the soil on the plant grounds, but he said an independentanalysis found that no dioxin washed into the Labe during the flood.
Slobodan Simonovic, a professor of civil and environmental engineeringat the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said the Czech Republicneeds to coordinate everything from land use and forecasting toemergency service and public information.
Haverkamp suggests that officials endorse a system of flood plains toregulate the water levels upriver. By creating natural areas around theriver, he said, the water can flow out over a longer period of time."It's not about the amount of rainfall, it's about the amount of waterpassing through [the city]," he said.
Simonovic said parts of Prague might even have to be returned to anatural floodplain state, an idea that would mean the end of Karlin.
The 2002 flood, the worst in more than 150 years, has cost 17 billion Kc in Prague alone and 80 billion Kc nationwide. Seventeen people died andmore than 250,000 evacuated their homes during a week in which many ofthe country's rivers swelled to more than 10 times their normal levels.
The national government in January announced that it intends to releasea blueprint for a new flood plan. It is not known when the plan will becompleted.
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-- Lenka Ponikelská and Ingrid Ludviková contributed to this report.
