Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea has announced that between Sunday and Wednesday 185 localities got under water, one person died and four persons are going missing. The person who died is aged 71 from Valcea County village Stroesti and was reported missing three days ago. The man was found dead on Thursday morning seven km away from where he lived near Copaceni village. A second person has been reported missing since Tuesday afternoon and is searched by authorities in Valcea County. He is a 40 years man from Stoenesti village whom the villagers saw while he was drifted away by the flood.
Attending a meeting of the Emergency Command at the Government House, Oprea called on all the local authorities in the areas under Red Code flood advisories issued by hydrologists and valid throughout Friday, urging them to keep permanently in contact with the locals and warn in time those in danger. He said that the Interior Ministry (MAI) is acting in flooded and flood-prone areas using 1,120 officers and 697 pieces of equipment and it can draw from a pool of 4,643 stand-by gendarmes, police officers, border police officers and aviation inspectors.
Oprea also drew up a report on the flood-related actions deployed by MAI over the last 24 hours. ‘For more than 24 hours, since the first problems emerged, we have mobilised important forces and means in all the flood-stricken counties to support the locals. Yesterday and last night, 2,200 firefighters, gendarmes and police officers intervened. They had a clear order to stay overnight in the localities where the flood risks remained high, to be with the people and help them when need be. As many as 909 people have been preventively evacuated and rescued since the first floods occurred,’ said Oprea, quoted by Agerpres. He also said MAI is conducting integrated work jointly with the Defence Ministry, which has more than 3,000 officers at the ready and more than 200 pieces of hardware, including airplanes and helicopters.
Moravita, Barzava river basins in Timis county on Code Red flood alert
On the other hand, according to a warning issued by the National Institute for Hydrology and Water Management, the river basins of Moravita and Barzava, the western Timis county are on a Red Code alert of floods starting 10:15 a.m. on Thursday.
The warning targets significant flows down the slopes, torrents, streams and flash floods that will result in local flooding and fast rises in the water flows and levels, with the flood danger levels being passed in the basins of Moravita and Barzava. The Red Code alert is in place till 9 p.m., the experts announced.
The meteorologists issued a new Code Orange warning for Caras-Severin, Mehedinti and Dolj counties, valid as of Thursday, 3 am till Friday same hour. It will pour in these three counties and there might be local water amounts of 40 to 50 liters per square meter and more than 70 liters in some areas. The counties Timis, Hunedoara, Gorj, Valcea and Olt will be under Code Yellow of rain and storm from Thursday, 3 am to Friday 10 am. There will be heavy showers in these counties with lightning and short gusts of wind. The water amounts will exceed 20 to 24 liters per square meters in some areas and 50 liters in isolated areas.
Gov’t to earmark RON 12 million for the counties
of Gorj, Valcea and Arges
At its meeting on Thursday, the Government will allocate RON 12 million to the public administrations of the counties of Gorj, Valcea and Arges to cover emergency spending required for interventions in flood-stricken areas and flood cleanup. Ponta asked deputy prime ministers Gabriel Oprea, Liviu Dragnea and Daniel Constantin and Defence Minister Mircea Dusa to cover onsite the regional coordination of the counties that are still under water and weather warnings. He added that the weather forecasts indicate maximum vigilance is needed this night in the southern part of the country, namely the counties of Teleorman, Olt, Dolj, Mehedinti and Caras-Severin.
Deputy PM Dragnea: We did not want to panic people, but Brezoi ran risk to be swept by floods
Deputy PM Liviu Dragnea said on Thursday that there was a risk for the town of Brezoi in Valcea County (south) to be swept by floods unless specialists with Hidroelectrica and the Romanian Waters had not kept under control the Bradisor dam. It was a special case at the Bradisor dam, 20 km upstream from Brezoi, in which unless the people with Romanian Waters and Hidroelectrica had worked together to find the optimal overflow level so that the dam could withstand and also to keep under control the flow downstream, the town of Brezoi may have been swept. We did not give then the information as we did not want to panic, but if we had reached a situation where we would have found that things could not be held under control there, the town of Brezoi could have been evacuated,’ Dragnea said in an interview with DC News. Prime Minister’s request, they are considering altering the law on home insurance, given that many of the homes affected by the floods were not insured. ‘And if they wanted to insure [their homes], no company would insure a home which is made of mud-bricks (..) I have spoken with the Prime Minister who demanded that we alter the law,’ said Dragnea. In his opinion, in the case of the floods in the past days, ‘the most important thing was the fact that the emergency system functioned,’ and thus almost 1,000 people have been saved.
Director of “Romanian Waters” resigned
General director of the National Administration “Romanian Waters” Vasile Pintilie announced on Wednesday night in a press release that he will submit his honorary resignation as the measure followed the request of PM Victor Ponta to replace him. According to the quoted sources, the request for Vasile Pintilie’s resignation was issued to the Minister of Environment, as the institution is subordinared to the Ministry. The request was issued right after the emergency situation command center convoked on Wednesday afternoon. After the information regarding Ponta’s request went public, Pintilie who has been on vacation since the start of the week, called the PM and told him he coordinated by phone the entire activity of the institution during the flood.
A total number of 1,184 people were evacuated since the floods started and 99 houses were destroyed, along with 168 houses affected and 2,003 houses flooded, announced Minister of the Interior Gabriel Oprea at the emergency situations command center at the Government. He added that the floods affected 223 households and 185 territorial-administrative units. 7 national roads were affected on stretched totaling 1.5 km, 37 county roads on 88.7 km and 39 village roads on 239 km.
