Severe storm hits eastern and northern Croatia

A preliminary assessment of the extent of the damage caused by the storm is still being conducted, however, farmers fear that their crops are all but lost for this year. Local authorities have promised that levees will be constructed to avoid this level of destruction in the future.

A strong storm hit parts of Croatia on Monday afternoon. Hail the size of hazelnuts caused massive damage to hundreds of hectares of crops in Vukovar-Srijem County. In Ilok strong winds uprooted trees, and roads and basements were flooded. Zvjezdana Šućurović from the City of Ilok: "The wind blew everything away in twenty minutes. It carried our chairs out onto the street, on that side of the house the exterior roller blinds are full of holes. The neighbor’s roof was damaged, we are ran over to see if we could save some of her furniture or other belongings. It was horrible. Last year it hit in July, this year in June. Part of our roof was torn off damaging everything in the attic."

Meanwhile, the head of Gradište municipality near Vinkovci, Srečko Papac, said that the damage to crops is massive: "In this part of the field the damage to the soya crop is visible and one hundred percent. The barley and wheat crops are at thirty to seventy percent damage depending on the phase of maturity, but this has to be established in more detail. The worst thing is that this happened right before the barley harvest."

The storm also hit the Bjelovar-Bilogora and Krapina-Zagorje counties, where crops were destroyed, local roads were damaged, and houses were flooded. The clean-up effort is expected to take days. Regional authorities have vowed to build levees to avoid future damages. The Mayor of Grubišno Polje Zlatko Mađeruh: "We're going to submit a request to the county to declare a state of natural disaster for the entire Grubišno Polje area."

In the nearby village of Nebojse Marijan Horvat's house was flooded: "You could literally see the water level in the creek rise. And all at once, in less than ten minutes, the creek burst its banks and the water flooded into my garage. I didn't even have time to move my tools, the washing machine and the meat in the freezer to higher ground, that's how fast it happened."

The head of Desinić municipality, Zvonko Škreblin, vowed that appropriate floodbanks would be erected: "An extreme rain fell for about half an hour, but I believe that all of this will get resolved now and that citizens will be able to sleep easy. It will get done this year, one hundred percent!"

Unfortunately, the storm also claimed one life. In Rasinja, near Koprivnica, the body of a 74-year-old woman was found in a flooded basement. It is believed she died of a heart attack. Emergency services in the Koprivnica area are working to repair the damage caused by the flood. One local explained where the core problem lies: "A lot of rain fell in a very short period of time. This creek is blocked off down there, and it has nowhere to go. So it spreads out here, through those gardens, that road down there. This was unavoidable."

The head of Rasinja municipality, Danimir Kolman, said that the damages are still being asses, and the clean-up effort will likely take days: "The drainage and runoff channels could not absorb that amount of water, so we truly have significant damages. Right now we're still assessing the damages. We'll do some quick fixes where we can, but obviously more detailed works on roads and houses will have to wait until later when the water recedes."

Source: HRT