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CNN Live Today

In Europe, Surging Rivers Leave Trail of Death and Destruction

Aired August 19, 2002 - 10:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: In Europe, surging rivers have left a trail of death and destruction. In Hungary, the emergency crews have been fending off floodwaters, and they have had some success in doing so. In Germany, we're facing the biggest relief effort since World War II.
Michael Holmes joins us now. He's got more as that effort gets under way.

Good morning, Michael.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Leon.

Yes, this is been a massive emergency operation. You can see behind me, an armored personnel carrier, amphibious, may come in handy here. I'll tell you in a minute. You can also just see some of thousands of emergency personnel behind me. These are mainly firemen, but there are 16,000 soldiers involved, thousands of firemen, police, and tens of thousands of civilians involved in trying to keep the floodwaters out of the towns and villages that have not been hit.

We're just outside of a place called Berlizt (ph) in Eastern Germany, and we're as close as we can get to a dike that is under great strain at the moment. There is a lot of fear, I think we have some pictures of it. That's what focus of this operation base is all about.

Now, the floodwaters have broken through several dikes in a number of places, and flooded a number of towns and villages. This dike, that's very close to where we are has essentially become so waterlogged that it's starting to break apart, and breaking apart at the top, but more seriously breaking a part at the bottom. It's starting to crumble and shift from the base. There has been an enormous operation going on here to try to stop that happening. They've had engineers, they've had troops, they've had thousands of sandbags and I chain of people passing them back and forth, where the engineers are actually creating essentially a sort of sand foundation just to stop this thing from crumbling.

On the other side of that dike is a wall of water. It's about four meters deep, and if this dike breaks, it is going to will come through here in a hurry, and it will enter the town of Berlitz (ph) and do enormous damage.

Engineers tells us they are confident. They are not that confident however. If the water levels don't drop around here and drop significantly, which has not been happening, that dike, they say, might last two days if they're lucky. Now that's the tale of what's been going on around eastern Germany.

Now the dike has, as I say, got four meters of water behind it. But that water is five kilometers from the Elbe River, so that's giving you some sort of indication of the breadth of this flooding. Downriver, waters are rising, but we're told that the towns that are in way downriver actually have pretty good defenses, and although the river levels will be at historically record levels, the towns downstream are fairly confident they will make it. Behind, however, upstream the cleanup just beginning. A huge job, too. This is going to be a multibillion dollar problem for Germany, which is already suffering some economic problems.

They are getting help from European neighbors, with Russian fireman on the way, Polish firemen on the way, and plenty of Europeans as well. We just had a helicopter drop off a general here to have a look at this dike. The third general to come today. Obviously a lot of concern, Leon.

HARRIS: All right, thanks, Michael.

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