Toxic Red Sludge Flooded Devecser, Hungary On Monday
- 7 Oct 2010 3:45 AM
Devecser resembles a barren, desolate landscape under the thick cover reddish mud that recently flooded the town on Monday. Only one day after the governmental elections, the new major of the town woke up to find the area buried under the toxic waste of the nearby alumina factory, located in Ajka. People mourn over the loss of their homes built with a decade’s worth of work, but are trying to help the firefighters rescue the neighbors trapped inside their own homes.
The red mud not only inundated Devecser, but two other neighboring towns as well, Somlóvásárhely and Kolontár, after a safety dam broke through in the factory. The red sludge’s high alkali concentration makes the mud toxic, the risk of which might only become transparent during the recovery of the towns. The severly contaminated Torna river can even carry the mud as far as the Danube.
So far at least 3 persons have died of the catastrophe, including a 3 year-old child, at least 7 have disappeared and over 110 are injured. Over a 1000 inhabitants were evacuated from the three towns altogether. Devecser is currently closed to public traffic. Apart from dozens of police and firefighter squads, a military personnel of 140 members is also helping in cleaning the streets and providing helicopter-transport for the injured.
The Veszprém County Police Department has already begun examining whether the factory-owner Mal Zrt. is in any way responsible for the accident.
Translated from Origo.hu by Bernát Iváncsics
Click here to see a photo gallery of the disaster
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