Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Elbe Still Rising in Historic German City of Dresden

Aired August 16, 2002 - 14:20   ET

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

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: To central Europe now, and the worst flooding in recent memory. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, and the Elbe is still rising in the historic German city of Dresden.
CNN's Gaven Morris is there, and he joins us with more on the situation -- Gaven.

GAVEN MORRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Still rising, indeed, Martin.

I am standing here because I wanted to show you how far levels have gone today. If you see the hedge behind me there. That was a good half meter or more, almost a meter shy when we arrived early this morning. Now they are expecting in the next little while that will disappear all together.

Where I am right now is where we stopped at our reports from this morning. And as you can see here, again, a good half meter is how far it has risen during the context of this day. Now, obviously for us, that is a moderate inconvenience. That means you have to move. But for many people up and down this river, what it's really meant is that the fight to save their properties, to hold back the Elbe, has become harder and harder as the day has gone long.

Here, the water is very calm, but out there, where the water is swirling and is fierce, if you are anywhere near that, the height of the water, and the extent that is it has increased as the day progresses has become an enormous problem, and we've seen dozens of battles up and down the river of people trying to save their properties with sandbags, with whatever they have, and unfortunately, it's not over yet, Martin.

SAVIDGE: Gaven, Dresden has told us so much in the way of our treasures and our architecture. What do we know about the historic structures there? How are they faring?

MORRIS: The structures are faring not too badly at the moment, but it's very hard to tell. We are right next to a museum of archaeology, and all day, they've been pumping water out of the basement of that. Obviously, they got all the artwork out of the way in most of these places, but as you say, now the concern is about the structure.

All of these buildings, or most of these buildings, are very historic, which luckily means they are very well built. So hopefully, the hope is that when the water subsides, the buildings will be OK. The more modern buildings in the town of Dresden that are flooded, there is more concern about those, because, well, to put it quite frankly, we just don't build buildings like we used to -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: That's very true, Gaven. Thank you very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com