A new historic flood in March 2001 started in the upper basin. It was caused by a sudden warm up and heavy rains falling on the snow cover and frozen earth in the Ukraine and Romania. Most water-meter stations on the Tisza and its tributaries recorded the highest water levels ever.
The only similar flood happened in 1888. The floods caused unusually great damages to property and in the Ukraine they even claimed several human lives. In the Hungarian territory, the Tur River burst its left dyke and the Tisza breached its righthand dyke in two places near the village of Tarpa. The flood waters gradually inundated an area of about 60 km2 confined by canal dykes on the right bank of the Tisza in Hungary and Ukraine.
The Tisza touches the Slovak territory in a 6-km-long border section between the villages of Male Trakany and Veľke Trakany. The righthand dyke had been strengthened after previous floods and therefore no adverse phenomena happened this time. The situation was considerably helped by dyke bursts in the Hungarian territory. Slovakia, through its Slovak Water Management Company's Bodrog and Hornad Basin Division, provided aid to solve this emergency situation in the Ukrainian territory. A team of 8 workers with a complete technical equipment (4 portable submersible pumps with a combined capacity of about 1000 l/s, 2 trucks, a truck-mounted crane, 2 diesel-powered electricity generators, a caravan and a motor-fuel tanker truck) was deployed to pump water out of the inundated area between March 23 and March 31, 2001.
O. HANDZOK - In: Vodohospodarsky spravodajca. Vol. 44, no. 7-8(2001), p. 14-15.
Information & Contact:
Research Institute of Water Management,
Nabr. arm. gen. L. Svobodu 5,
811 02 Bratislava,
tel.: 00421 (2) 59343111,
fax: 00421 (2) 54415743
