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People are starting to shout "HAARP"!!
All I can say is the folks at HAARP must have an awful lot on their hands bringing about the melting of the icecaps and extreme weather in every corner of the globe!
Death toll rises to 44 in worst ever Balkan flooding
All I can say is the folks at HAARP must have an awful lot on their hands bringing about the melting of the icecaps and extreme weather in every corner of the globe!
Death toll rises to 44 in worst ever Balkan flooding
The overall death toll in the unprecedented floods that have raged across the Balkans has reached 44, as more bodies were recovered from the Serbian town of Obrenovac on Sunday.
RT,
18
May, 2014
In "Obrenovac alone we recovered 12 corpses," Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said, as cited by the Associated Press. That brings the number of disaster victims in Serbia up to 16, while Bosnia has confirmed 27 dead and Croatia one.
Rescue teams and humanitarian aid have come to Serbia and neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina from 14 European Union member-states. Kristalina Georgieva, the EU's humanitarian aid chief, said it was a“perfect demonstration of European solidarity.”
Famous movie director, Emir Kusturica, has donated his two helicopters to Serbian rescuers to assist with evacuations.
“According to information I got from the pilots, my Robinsons saved 25 people, mostly children,” Kusturica said, as cited by Itar-Tass. “The helicopters have spent almost 24 hours in the air, and as long as the battle with the water continues, they will be at the government’s disposal.”
Russian relief workers in Serbia have evacuated more than 2,100 people over two days, including 576 children from flooded areas. On Sunday, two Russian cargo planes brought food, generators and rescue boats to the disaster-struck country.
The Russian team of 76 rescuers has mostly been working in the worst-hit Serbian town of Obrenovac.
“When the [Russian] crew arrived, a bigger part of the town was under water, in some of the areas water was reaching the roofs,” said Aleksandr Savoskin, assistant to the director of the Russian-Serbian humanitarian center. “What aggravated the situation was the fact that roads turned into streams, and evacuation was only possible by boat or helicopter.”
In total, over 24,000 people in Serbia have been evacuated as a result of several days of heavy rains, according to Sunday’s estimate announced by the head of the sector for emergency situations at the country’s Interior Ministry, Predrag Maric.
Serbian PM Vucic emotionally described the natural disaster as the worst “not just in a hundred, but in a thousand years.”
Vucic said the biggest danger was still presented by the Sava river: it has not overflown thanks to kilometers-long sandbag barriers. In the area of Sabac city, the water has been standing at a level of 6.6 meters, but if the water rises to 6.8 meters it will spill over the barriers.
Survivors of the most severely flooded regions have found temporary shelter in schools, university campuses and hotels. They shudder to recall what they went through and to think of what lies ahead.
"I carried my kids out on my back, then waited 12 hours to be rescued myself," 40-year-old Obrenovac resident Dragan Todorovic told Reuters. "The house was new, built two years ago for 100,000 euros. What now?"
Officials in the disaster-affected countries have not yet come up with estimates of the damage caused by the floods, but they already expect those to be astronomical. The agricultural sector, on which the economies of the Balkan countries rely, is expected to bear the brunt of the record flooding.
Serbia and Bosnia flooding forces thousands to flee homes
Rescue workers fear the worst as they try to reach towns cut off by raging river Sava
18 May, 2014
Thousands of people crammed into boats and army trucks have fled their homes in Serbia and Bosnia after record rainfall turned the Sava river into a deadly torrent and caused the worst floods in more than a century.
According to officials in both countries, the disaster has killed at least 44 people. Some towns have been completely cut off and rescue teams feared the worst as improving weather allowed them to move in.
Some 10,000 people have been evacuated so far from the worst-affected areas of northern Bosnia. In the town of Samac, hundreds of stranded residents were waiting to be rescued.
Flooded cars in Obrenovac. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters
"We sent rescue teams into a part of the city we had not been able to access so far. They are entering those areas fearing what they might discover," the mayor, Samo Minic, told reporters.
The worst rainfall since records began in the late 19th century caused landslides that brought more destruction and also prompted a landmine warning.
Bosnia's demining agency said residents around the towns of Doboj, Maglaj and Olovo – which saw fierce fighting during the war in the 1990s – should be particularly wary.
A van is stranded in mud in Topcic Polje, Bosnia. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Twenty of the 27 deaths recorded in Bosnia occurred in Doboj while on the other side of the Sava river, in Serbia, at least 16 bodies were found.
The prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, said 12 bodies had been found in the town of Obrenovac alone, bringing the toll in Serbia to 16.
"Unfortunately there are estimates that the death toll will be higher," he said.
Croatia has also confirmed one casualty, as a result of bad weather that engulfed much of central and parts of eastern Europe at the weekend.
Evacuees from the Serbian town of Obrenovac in a shelter hall in Belgrade. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters
Ukraine's emergencies ministry said electricity had been cut to about 100 villages in the north and west because of heavy rains and winds but that no casualties had been reported.
In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, dozens of schools and sport centres were turned into shelters for the thousands of evacuees plucked the disaster zones by boats, buses and helicopters.
Thousands of volunteers worked through the night to stack sandbags along the banks of the Sava river in Belgrade, expecting a "floodingwave".
Serbian soldiers help people leave their homes in Obrenovac. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters
The mayor, Sinisa Mali, said he was confident any swelling of the Danube tributary could be contained but there was still concern further up river.
"The biggest problem is still along the Sava river. An evacuation is under way in Sremska Raca. In other areas it's getting better," Vucic said.
"What happened to us happens once in a thousand years, not hundred but thousand years," he said.
An aerial view of the flooded city of Orasje. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Humanitarian aid, technical equipment and teams from Russia, the European Union, the United States and neighbouring Montenegro and Macedonia were pouring in, authorities said.
Expressing his gratitude to all foreign countries for the aid, Vucic said Serbia now needed "food, baby food, diapers, all kind of clothes, medicaments, bottled water, disinfection and hygienic resources".
The Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, in Rome where he has reached the final of the Rome Masters, on Saturday posted an appeal for "support and solidarity for my people in Serbia!" on his Facebook page, where he has more than 4 million followers.
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