Danube the River of Terror

Not less than 5,000 people expect to be evacuated if the breach the Danube created in the dam at Bistret is not covered.

One can hear the frogs’ croaks in all the villages on the Danube’s bank all the way from Turnu-Magurele to Calafat. It’s Monday night and the people are not on the streets because of a holiday, but because of the news about the Danube. "It tears up…", "I heard it has torn up", "It will take us off the face of the Earth"…

WANDERING. The spring night starts to sound like heavy army trucks and horses’ tramp in Carna.
The carts coming from Bistret and Plosca carry bed cushions, which sway over the old furniture. The people have started to leave for their relatives and neighbors where the Danube cannot reach. In the evening, they were announced to gather their things and leave. Most of them carried the important things out of their houses and then got back. This is the fifth night in which the villagers in Bistret don’t sleep and try to enforce the dam that protects the village.

HARD-HIT. The road to Calafat suddenly stops after Bistretul Nou. Negoi, Catanele and Rast are the villages on the other side. More than 4,000 people have been evacuated from these localities after the river broke through the dams a few meters away from the place where the authorities wanted to create a strategic breach. However, the strategic move caused many disasters. Hundreds of people in the Rast village still wait for the waters to go back. They stay in tents or on the sides of the road to Bailesti.

OVER THE DAM. At dawn, the Danube has passed over the dam in three places. If the river breaks here, the danger will maximize for the several villages in down the river. If this happens, more than 5,000 people will be evacuated. Razzle-dazzle. Hundreds of members of the riot police, tens of cars. Carts with bags and rocks run to the first place where the water weakened the dam. The soldiers carry the bags to the place where the Danube gasps more, at the base of the dam. Wham… Hundreds of bags over other hundreds of bags… tons of rocks.

IMAGE. The soldiers work quietly, careful to account the chief in command. As soon as a camera appears, the chief quickly grabs the bag that the soldier had carried and smashes it over the other bags. However, the villagers are gabby. "Of course you are the one that should talk to the press since you have just showed up. What the f*** are you doing here? You don’t have water invading your house", a young man shouts at an old man riding his bicycle on the dam. "He is angry because the water flooded his vineyard", the man explains and then he turns to his neighbor and applies him a racist swear.

WAR WITH THE PRESS. The journalists got some of the villagers’ fury either. "One cannot walk on the dam because of their cameras. It makes one break his neck. How should one be able to carry the bags?! Now, they stay in the sun like snakes waiting for the water to break in for them to have what to film", one villager coughs it up on the journalists, who "see one thing and tell it different on TV". At the border of the village, the housewives gathered around to gossip about the media running on the dam. "Just look at that girl from the TV looking for the deeper water. Don’t let the frogs get into your panties", one of the women in the village advises right in the middle of a live broadcast.