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Cleaning up
City gets to work after worst flooding in 150 years
By
Kate Swoger
STAFF WRITER
A month ago, the Kampa Park restaurant ranked high among the pearls of the Prague fine-dining scene. Now it is mired in mud.
Instead of serving up seared Pacific pompano on a terrace a few feet from the Vltava river, waiters scrape buckets of sludge from the floor into a dumpster.
The low-slung riverbank restaurant was among dozens of businesses and private residences on the front line of the worst flooding to strike the capital in more than 150 years. Nestled quaintly below the Charles Bridge, Kampa island all but vanished beneath the Vltava when waters peaked Aug. 14, spilling into a dozen neighborhoods.
Kampa Park owner Nils Jebens was helpless as he watched the river reach the eaves of his single-story restaurant. It crested nearly 8 meters (26 feet) above the norm, a modern record. More than 50,000 Prague residents were evacuated from their homes.
Now Jebens, like thousands of other business owners and homeowners throughout Bohemia, is turning his attention to repair. It will take two or three months and tens of millions of crowns, he estimates, to dry out walls and rewire electrical outlets. He must also install new floors, toilets and suspended ceilings.
"It's really boring, the whole thing," he said with a resigned shrug. "It's just a lot of work for nothing."
KEEPING IT CLEAN
The Health Ministry has issued instructions for residents of flooded areas:
Wash your hands thoroughly and often.
Drink only water that has been verified as safe.
Do not eat food in flooded areas, except canned items.
Clean and disinfect food tins.
Discard any damaged tins, any refrigerated items that were above 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) for more than four hours and any frozen items that were thawed for more than two hours.
Dry, clean and disinfect flooded rooms, furniture, dishes, toys, clothes, linens, cars and bicycles.
Use water-diluted chlorine bleach or a disinfectant such as SAVO.
Wear gloves and boots while working in flooded areas.
Contact your doctor immediately if you experience nausea or diarrhea.
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Crushed by a flood of historic proportions, the country must deal with an estimated 64 billion Kc ($2 billion) in damage -- and do so while restoring hygiene and fending off disease.
In Prague, the hub of these intense cleanup efforts, local business owners think it may be years before some areas are fully restored.
The receding waterline brought out thousands of sanitation crews, soldiers and volunteers. They worked in a city that often looked like a construction site. Dumpsters lay scattered on curbs. Piles of damp wood and garbage lay outside flooded buildings. Cleaning trucks swept through a morass of small and large debris.
The Army alone assigned 10,000 personnel to the cleanup effort.
Illness, with hepatitis first on the list, remained a primary concern.
Officials said the combination of sustained high temperatures and contaminated food and water bring the risk of hepatitis A, jaundice and intestinal illnesses.
"Diarrhea-causing illnesses are considered a big threat because bacteria can spread in the water very quickly," said Vilma Maresova, head of the infectious disease department at Prague's Bulovka Teaching Hospital.
She said it was impossible to speculate how long flood-induced health risks might persist.
Toxins, heavy metals and oils absorbed by rivers, lakes and ponds pose health risks that could last months.
Five years ago, after massive flooding in Moravia, hepatitis A cases increased fivefold. Four people, including two rescue workers, died from the disease, which inflames the liver.
"So far, we have no information about epidemics anywhere," said Mario BOhme, a spokesman for the Health Ministry.
He said the nation's estimated 220,000 evacuees were being monitored for possible infections. Supplies of the vaccine are available to inoculate as many as 65,000 children, who are at highest risk.
"We call it the disease of dirty hands," said Dr. Frantisek KOlbel of Prague's private Canadian Medical Care center.
Those in flood zones are also at risk of contracting intestinal infections, such as salmonella, from contaminated food and water.
KOlbel urged people to avoid swimming in water near the flood zone, warning of mercury intoxication and allergic reactions.
Stress and anxiety are also on the increase due to the disaster, he added.
For Eva Bruclikova, a Prague 8 resident, the lack of information about property and personal belongings was galling.
When the flood struck, she and her husband were on vacation in Tunisia. The couple returned to find themselves cut off from their Karlin home.
MAJOR DAMAGE
NATIONWIDE
14 people killed
220,000 homes evacuated
64 billion Kc ($2 billion) in damage, including:
More than 4 billion Kc to infrastructure
2.5 billion Kc to farms
2 billion Kc to highways
1.8 billion Kc to railways
600 million to 1 billion Kc to food industry
31 bridges swept away
PRAGUE
2 billion Kc damage to Prague metro
28 Prague metro stations closed
400 million to 700 million Kc in damage to water distribution system
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The district, reopened briefly, was closed again Aug. 18 when a building collapsed. It was the third such collapse since the water receded. Ten percent of Karlin's buildings were said to be at risk.
But Bruclikova still didn't know the fate of her ground-floor apartment on Krizikova, which seemed imperiled. "Nobody wants to tell us anything," she said.
Prague Mayor Igor Nemec announced the district would remain shut at least until Aug. 23 to check building security and hygiene. "Meat is going bad in all the butcher shops. Sanitary conditions are disastrous," Nemec said.
City traffic remained in disarray.
The first of 17 damaged subway stations was to reopen by late September, with officials predicting that the system would return to its preflood state by Christmas. Repairs are expected to cost 2 billion Kc.
Cleanup needs forced changes. A restricted lane around the central headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, closed as a post-Sept. 11 security measure, was temporarily reopened as a bus lane Aug. 19 after Nemec said limits on the busy thoroughfare could paralyze traffic. The lane will be monitored by video camera, said Interior Minister Stanislav Gross.
Worries of every sort abounded.
At the foot of Charles Bridge, at Karolina Truhlarova's puppet shop in Mala Strana, mud-caked marionettes hung below the line left by the highest point of flooding.
Inside, a friend sprayed disinfectant on the water-soaked walls.
"Who knows? Nobody knows what's inside," Truhlarova said.
On the cobblestone street, Truhlarova's helpers -- most of them artisans -- scrubbed small figures in a tub.
Truhlarova, who had no flood insurance, refused to speculate on the cost of the cleanup. She knows only that she and her husband, who is the shop's co-owner, cannot abandon the 50-odd artisans who depend on the shop's sales for their livelihood.
She said she felt particularly strong compassion for the street's elderly population. "We'll somehow get over this, but those people ..." and her voice trailed off. "We have friends, thank God. Without friends, I don't know what we would do."
Across the river, in Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, most streets were closed to traffic and some were cordoned off entirely. Basement seepage was severe. Pockets of roads had collapsed. Electricity was cut.
"After seven years [in business], it's hard. But there are people who got it worse," said Alberto Courne, owner of the French-style bistro Chez Marcel, as staff worked to dry out the bar in the cellar below the eatery.
U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton, who cut short an American vacation to return to Prague, surveyed the damage to buildings on Kampa island Aug. 18. In addition to pledging 16 million Kc in aid, the United States has offered to pay to clean up the island.
The damaged city is close to the hearts of many Americans, he said. "People know what the river meant [to Prague]."
The Vltava swallowed up part of Jaroslav Zidek's restaurant beside the Legii bridge. As the river continued to drop, only the top of the mangled awnings of C'est La Vie's riverside terrace were visible above the water.
The flood also filled the restaurant building above at its peak. Zidek and his partner, Zdenek Sirovy, said they would use the disaster as an opportunity to remodel the restaurant and change the menu.
"It'll be called C'est La Vie Continued," Zidek laughed.
-- Krystof Hilsky, Martina Sedlakova and Katka Svobodova contributed to this report.
Kate Swoger's e-mail address is
kswoger@praguepost.com
(August 21, 2002)
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