Landslides jeopardizing homes in rural Serbia

Our teams travelled to some of the more remote areas affected by devastating flooding in Serbia last week to find out what the current situation is for these communities and how Save the Children might be able to help the recovery process in the coming months.

In Loznica the Deputy Mayor told how they are now registering new and often serious landslides on a daily basis.  To date there have already been over 300 landslides in this municipality alone and between 20 and 30 homes have been completely destroyed.

 

A landslide outside Bajina Basta covers half the main road

A similar story is playing out in Bajina Basta where, in a briefing with our team, the Mayor highlighted how the landslides are not just destroying people’s homes (19 so far) but also infrastructure vital to rural communities everyday lives like country roads and bridges.

Many families who work the land in these regions have found themselves completely cut-off from main towns as roads have been ripped apart by shifting ground or buried by the debris from the landslides. One local talking to our team described it as if the roads had been literally picked up and wrung like a towel.

What was evident was that over 3 weeks since the flooding began many rural communities are still unable to access basic services located in main towns, or even their own fields and outhouses, often just hundreds of metres away.

A huge operation is now needed to ensure that communities hitherto cut-off are provided with the assistance they need so that they can try and get their lives back on track.

But this is a huge job. In Loznica alone the authorities estimate that the damage to both infrastructure and agriculture in the municipality will total over €6 million; to put this into perspective this is the municipality’s entire annual budget for 2014.

 


A home lies abandoned after a landslide swept away its foundations

However, it is not just the physical damage of the landslides that is having a major impact on those affected. Many have now seen everything they owned destroyed.  As one mother stated to our team: “We’ve lived here for over 15 years. This was our home. The thought of not being able to come back is like one of the family dying.”