Nongovernmental organizations rolled out fast before, during and after the floods, often reaching areas that would otherwise be cut off, to work side by side with locals in bracing for the worst.

Then, after reservoirs in the Morava and Labe river basins were overwhelmed by rapidly accumulating snow runoff, made worse by rain, all these everyday heroes dug in and got to work dealing with the crisis at hand.

It's a pity government leaders haven't learned much by their example.

Ústí nad Labem, one of the worst-hit cities, happens to be Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek's official district as a Social Democratic member of Parliament, so the politicizing of the flood was probably, to some degree, inevitable.

But the speed at which the head of state seized on the floods, in which eight people have died and another 12,000 have been displaced, boggles the mind. Paroubek chose to ridicule the mayor of Ústí, Petr Gandalovič, who happens to be an opposition Civic Democrat candidate for the region for, as he put it, "oversleeping."

In the typical style of obscurantism so loved in Parliament, Paroubek didn't elaborate on what he meant. But presumably this swipe was intended to suggest that Gandalovič didn't take advantage of state funds made available after the floods of 2002 to install flood barriers.

If so, there are just two problems with this line of thinking: First, many local officials have said the 4 billion Kč ($167 million) promised for nationwide flood prevention programs after 2002 hasn't completely materialized in the budget. Second, some regional authorities say that installing Prague-style metal flood barriers isn't practical in smaller towns, which have many more miles of river bank to cover and which might just find rebuilding flooded property cheaper than installing the barriers.

But the main problem with such a statement from Paroubek is the nature of the message itself.

Such public displays of sniping, rather than calls for unity and support in the face of a grave crisis, achieve exactly nothing in terms of helping people.

Political analysts are already at work, calculating whether Paroubek's attack on regional officials dealing with historic floods might actually help him gain points on the campaign trail. Some think, if combined with promises of relief, it just might.

But the residents of towns from Znojmo to Mělník to Ústí, as they piled up sandbags, packed up everything they owned and worried over their insurance coverage, were certainly not impressed by such leisurely finger-pointing.

"They don't care about us," was the refrain heard over and over by reporters on the front lines of the floods, spoken by small-town residents who feel their national leaders have abandoned them.

When floods wreck lives for the second time in four years, with no barriers in sight along the rivers and no lessons on water management apparently learned by state river basin companies upstream, it's hard for people to take much comfort in official assurances from Prague.