Heavy rain floods Belgrade suburbs, 12 people evacuated, Vucic promises sewage

N1

The heavy rain that hit the Belgrade area on Sunday evening and Monday morning caused extensive flooding across the Serbian capital with emergency services evacuating some residents of flooded areas near the banks of the Danube.

The rain and strong winds also led to power outages in parts of New Belgrade where flooded streets made it difficult to drive. The Internal Affairs Ministry‘s Emergency Situations Sector said that its personnel and local emergency services reported 37 interventions, evacuating 12 people from their flood homes.  

The emergency services said the situation was worst in the suburbs of Borca, Ovca, Krnjaca and Kotez on the left bank of the Danube (the Vojvodina side), Sector chief Predrag Maric said in a press release. Belgrade‘s emergency rescue services deployed high-capacity water pumps in several places.  

 The city crisis management staff met overnight and said in a press release that 20 kindergartens had been flooded and 9,000 households left without power. The city transport company said that it had been forced to bring in buses to replace trams because of the flooding.

 Mayor Goran Radojicic said on Monday morning that the parts of the highway running through the city had been flooded because two pumping stations had broken down at one point. He told the Serbian state TV that four power stations in New Belgrade were also not operating. The mayor said that a year’s worth of rain had fallen on the left bank of the Danube in just one hour.

Deputy Mayor Goran Vesic confirmed that the suburbs on the Vojvodina side of the Danube were hit worst by the heavy rain, claiming that pa rt of the problem was the lack of a sewage network. “The pumping stations on that side of the Danube managed to pump out a lot of the water which has been receding since the rain stopped,” he said and warned that a lot of the cesspits in those suburbs had spilt over.

“Belgrade was hit by heavy weather twice in two days and, according to the Republic Hydro-Meteorology Service (RHMZ), a month’s worth of rain fell,” he said. According to Vesic, about 100 litres per square metre fell on the left bank of the Danube, 60 litres in the Bezanijska Kosa area, 52 litres in Zemun and more than 40 litres in the Makis area. “There is no rain sewer that could take in that amount of water,” he said. Vesic blamed former city authorities for not investing in the sewer system before 2012, adding that the city authorities recently took out a loan to build a sewer system on the left bank of the Danube.

An N1 reporter was told that the First Basic Court in Belgrade was closed because the building was flooded. The building, on the Nikola Tesla Boulevard, has no power and cases are being transferred to a nearby court.