Balkans still recovering one year after catastrophic floods

International Orthodox Christian Charities: It's been a difficult year since record rainfall drenched the Balkans last spring, unleashing the worst flooding in more than 100 years and leaving a trail of destruction across Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. More than 70 people lost their lives, while hundreds of thousands of survivors had to evacuate as family homes and farms, roads and utilities were damaged or destroyed. Relentless summer and fall rains renewed flooding, which slowed recovery and threatened to keep many families from having warm and dry shelter in time for winter.

...From its offices in Serbia and Bosnia, International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) responded on the heels of the disaster, ensuring the delivery of relief to vulnerable families in the region's hardest hit communities. Through the financial support of church and private donors in the US, Australia and New Zealand, and close cooperation with local partners, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Red Cross, IOCC's ongoing assistance has helped thousands of survivors like Ljubica and Mladen return to their homes and resume their lives. More than 800 families have received support from IOCC with cleanup, home repair kits filled with construction materials, or replacement stoves and refrigerators.

The raging waters not only damaged homes and businesses, but also swept away desks, books, computers and lab equipment from school classrooms. Schooling came to a standstill for the 950 students of Šamac. Through your support, IOCC has helped restore the learning environment for the community's schoolchildren.

...More than 1,400 schoolchildren from the Serbian towns of Kladovo and Obrenovac suffered similar losses in their communities. The only primary school in the village of Tekija near Kladovo was so badly damaged by waves of mud and debris that the entire student body has had to be bussed daily to a school in Kladovo. IOCC is taking action with the installation of a new roof and heating system to be completed in time for Tekija's children to return to their own school next fall...

NASA image of 2014 flooding in Bosnia and Serbia

Bosnia hit by fresh flooding, two people missing

Daria Sito-Sucic in Reuters: Police in Bosnia searched on Friday for two people swept away during the second bout of torrential rainfall since May, when the Balkans were hit by the worst floods in more than a century. The body of a woman was recovered on Thursday from the muddy bank of a river in northwestern Bosnia, and two people were listed as missing, police said.

Bosnia suffered almost 2 billion euros worth of damage to homes, infrastructure and industry in May, when heavy rains caused rivers to burst their banks, sweep away roads and bridges and set off hundreds of landslides. More than 20 people died in Bosnia and more than 60 in Serbia.

 There were similar scenes, on a lesser scale, this week in Bosnia and parts of Serbia, where a man drowned in his cellar on Tuesday.

Residents of Zeljezno Polje in central Bosnia, who lost their homes in May, saw their village cut off again this week. Gathering in the nearby town of Zepce, they called on local authorities to give them land to build new houses, clean the river bed and repair roads and power supplies before winter.

...Last month, international donors pledged more than 1.8 billion euros ($2.4 billion) to aid the recovery and rebuilding in Bosnia and Serbia. A lack of coordination between Bosnia's two autonomous regions, created as a weak and dysfunctional union after the country's 1992-95 war, means none of the money allocated to Bosnia has yet been put to use. Donors say they will fund projects, which have still to be agreed on by the rival entities....

May 2014 flooding in Bosnia, shot by Dalibor Platenik - Dali, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Flood damage to Bosnia estimated at 2 billion euros

Terra Daily via AFP: Bosnia's record floods in May have caused damage estimated at two billion euros ($2.7 billion), seriously affecting the country's economy, an international expert group said on Wednesday.

The cost is equivalent to some 15 percent of Bosnia's 2013 gross domestic product (GDP) and will cause the economy to contract by 1.1 percent this year, compared to the growth of 2.2 percent that had been predicted before the floods, they said.

The estimates were made by experts from the EU, United Nations and World Bank along with local authorities.

It is only an "initial overall assessment of recovery needs" and "more verification work is needed" over the coming fortnight to provide more detailed numbers by sector, said a spokesman of the EU Delegation to Bosnia, Andy McGuffie. An initial estimate by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in late May had put the damage at around 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion)....

May 2014 flooding in Bosnia, shot by Dalibor Platenik - Dali, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license 

After the floods, questions for Balkan governments

Ivana Sekularac in Reuters: Pavle Pavlovic never heard the flood siren at 5 a.m. on Friday, May 16, when the waters of the nearby Kolubara River had already entered the Serbian town of Obrenovac. The 37-year-old power plant worker woke three hours later to find his street submerged. Like thousands of others, he was trapped.

"There was no warning that our neighbourhood could be flooded," Pavlovic said days later at a Belgrade sports hall that had become his temporary home. "Luckily we had some water and a loaf of bread in the apartment." Rescue boats reached his part of town two days later.

Now Serbians and Bosnians are asking why so little was done to protect lives and defend homes when meteorologists had given several days' notice of torrential rain in an area notoriously prone to flooding. They are also asking why online content critical of the government's response to the floods has disappeared.

At least 40 people died in Obrenovac after the skies dumped several months worth of rain on the Balkans in a few days. The toll has climbed to 65 in total in Serbia and Bosnia.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development estimates the damage in Serbia at up to 2 billion euros ($2.73 billion), or seven percent of national output, and 1.3 billion euros in Bosnia, or 10 percent of output....

2014 floods in Serbia, Kostajnik near Krupanj, shot by Danijela Vasić, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

Balkan flood devastation 'exceeds war damage'

Al-Jazeera.com: The cost of the recovery operation following devastating floods in the Balkans may amount to billions of dollars. Both Bosnia and Serbia said they will need international help, as EU and NATO officials visited affected areas on Wednesday to estimate damage.

Officials in Bosnia said they fear the damage caused by heavy rains and landslides would exceed that caused by the entire Balkan conflict fought between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats between 1992 and 1995.

As waters receded, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said that the damage in his co
untry exceeded 0.64 percent of GDP, meaning that Serbia can apply for EU solidarity funds, the AP news agency reported.

The heavy rainfall, which began last week, was the highest ever recorded in the Balkans. Excess water led to rivers breaking their banks and landslides that left 49 people dead and half a million people displaced.

The number of people killed included, 27 in Serbia, 20 in Bosnia and two in Croatia. Some 100,000 homes and 230 schools were destroyed by the torrents and hundreds of landslides. In Serbia, 3,500km of roads have been destroyed or damaged and about 30 percent of railway lines still cannot be accessed...

NASA image of flooding in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 19, 2014

Drought a serious blow to Balkans agriculture

The Oman Daily Observer: An unprecedented drought in the Balkans has dealt a serious blow to agriculture, causing grave losses estimated at more than a billion euros in one of Europe’s poorest regions. Temperatures over the past week in the southeastern European region have soared to more than 40 degrees Celsius, with no rains in most areas. After being hammered by a particularly rough winter with plummeting temperatures and record snowfall, Bosnia is now sweltering through its hottest summer since records began 120 years ago.

Sead Jelec of the National Association of Farmers said the country’s agricultural losses are estimated at between 30 and 40 per cent. The “total value of agriculture production in Bosnia is around one billion euros ($1.25 billion). We can say that the losses would be around 300 million euros,” Jelec said. The drought had especially hit corn crops, but also fruits and pastures. Croatia’s national agricultural chamber estimated the losses for that country at more than 134 million euros, chamber chairman Matija Brlosic said.

Several regions have declared a state of emergency, including the eastern Slavonia area, Croatia’s main agricultural producing region, where the drought has ravaged fields and left sunflowers browned and withered on their stalks. “Slavonia has literally been devastated. Cultures planted in spring are in a catastrophic state and the losses are estimated at between 60 and 100 per cent,” Brlosic said. Of around 1.5 million hectares of farming land in Croatia, only 18,000 are covered with irrigation systems.

In Serbia, initial loss estimates are close to one billion euros, a government source said. Particularly hard hit is the northern province of Vojvodina, nicknamed “Serbia’s granary,” with production estimated to top out at just 50 per cent of normal. More than one million hectares have been hit, mostly of corn, maize and soya, the agriculture ministry said, prompting the government to adopt a package with measures to assist farmers and their fields....

Beehives in Bosnia, shot by Tamas Ring, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Balkans heat wave fuels forest fires in Bosnia

Rena Knezevic in ABC News via the Associated Press: Authorities on Tuesday declared a state of emergency around a town in Bosnia's northeast and a tourist area was evacuated in the country's south as a heat wave fuelled wildfires across the Balkans and left people suffering heat exhaustion.

Bratunac Mayor Nedeljko Mladjenovic declared the emergency as he said wildfires from several directions were threatening his town. Around 50 residents are helping firefighters and forest rangers fight a blaze creeping towards the suburb of Slapasnica, and the town's civil protection agency has asked for help from the army and residents.

In the country's south, firefighters are battling four blazes around the town of Konjic and townsfolk and tourists have begun evacuating houses near Boracko Lake as the extreme heat and strong winds have hindered the extinguishing of approaching blazes. Many tourists staying at the lake are Bosnians who live in Germany, returning home for the holidays. Zorica Muskovic arrived last week from Munich.

...Many of the fires swept through fields still dotted with mines from the Bosnian War, which took place in the region between 1992 and 1995. The resort is situated on a former frontline. Tourists said that they could hear loud explosions from the forest as the mines were set off by the blaze

Such fires have been burning in several areas of Bosnia for weeks and the fight to extinguish them has been complicated by the country's hilly terrain, strong winds, little rainfall and a 40-Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) heat wave which is forcing people to seek medical assistance....

A Serbian cemetery in Bratunac, shot by Julian Nitzsche, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license