20.05.2014.

CBRN platoon of Serbian Armed Forces helps Trstenik

In Trstenik, where the floods left 15,000 residents without drinking water, Defence Minister Bratislav Gasic said that tomorrow one CBRN platoon of the Serbian Armed Forces will come to this place to help in the sanitation of the terrain.

The minister told reporters during the tour of Trstenik and the village of Grabovac that today the government agreed that the Ministry of Agriculture leads complete sanitation campaign across Serbia, "as there are so many flooded towns in Serbia and our CBRN centre cannot manage that" .

"The good news is that it has been agreed today with the University of Kragujevac that the Faculty of Chemistry students get together with them and help them in clearing up the terrain", Gasic said.

According to him, after the physical danger for the citizens of Serbia, to which they were threatened by flood, now they are in danger of infection.

"Now we have another equally important task to prevent infection or new threats that may endanger the health of the citizens of Serbia. What is ahead of us is not an easy or simple task, especially for experts from the CBRN centre, veterinary stations and the Ministry of Agriculture", Gasic said.

Minister Gasic said that there is a plan for sanitation of flooded areas, but now we need to respond quickly and distribute all the resources and strengths so that when the army withdraws from Obrenovac, for which he said that it is the most affected city in Serbia, all forces should respond there.

"It seems to me that people in this part of Serbia do not realize what the extent of the disaster in Obrenovac is. We have a dead town which was called Obrenovac", Gasic said.

The Defence Minister said that he thought that Serbian citizens do not take seriously the appeals of the Serbian government neither when it was about the evacuation nor now when they are ordered not to return to places that have not been repaired.

"They do not take it seriously when they are told not to take anything from the flooded soil until it is all examined by agricultural and veterinary inspection. We had many septic tanks that spilled over, broken sewer lines and animals that have died under the water", Gasic said.

President of the Municipality of Trstenik, Miroslav Aleksic, said that the West Morava and Ljubostinje rivers sank seven villages, 420 residential buildings, that roads were damaged in a total length of 10 kilometres and, most importantly, a source of healthy drinking water which supplied all Trstenik.

"We found ourselves in the situation that we have 15,000 people without a drop of drinking and technical water", Aleksic said.

He explained that last night a part of Trstenik got technical water using the alternative water from a small spring, but without the help of the Serbian government nothing would be possible when it comes to drinking water.

"This is something that awaits us next year, because everything is destroyed and we have to make everything from the beginning", Aleksic said.

He added that in the last few days, citizens of Trstenik and the surrounding villages have been cleaning up the consequences of the flood, but that at this time there are two more villages, Globoder and Planinica, which are completely cut off from the world.

"Heavy machinery has been removing the effects of flooding for five days already and we expect that by the end of the next day we come to these villages that are inhabited with 250 people in 70 households. We are delivering food, water, medicaments and other supplies to them on foot through the woods", President of the municipality of Trstenik said.

Aleksic said that Trstenik, apart from drinking water needs also diesel fuel for heavy machinery for eliminating the consequences of flooding from the road infrastructure.

"Everything else we can manage ourselves, even though more than 3,000 hectares of the municipality were flooded. I am not speaking at all about agricultural damage, crops and grafting production, but only about the damage to buildings and homes of our fellow citizens", Aleksic noted.

He said that the major problem for the residents of the municipality of Trstenik will be the return of people to their homes, because they "do not have the funds for furniture and sunken beds".

"By solidarity, we will help each other and provide home to our fellow citizens who suffered the greatest damage", Aleksic said.