Károly Gerendai, founder and main organizer of Sziget Festival, said: “The practice shows from the last few years that after a flood reconstruction works are needed for months to get the island back to normal. This is why we choose to turn our attention to save the island, instead of working afterwards. As a result we can happily say that we succeeded.”

In the last couple of years Sziget Cultural Management pays a significant amount of money to use the publically owned island for the time of the festival and now the costs of saving the island from the Danube added up to 40 million HUF. Although Károly Gerendai accepts the fact that there was no time for any agreements he added: “As the focus of the centrally coordinated official teams was to protect, naturally, the people and populated areas, unfortunately there was no capacity to protect the Óbudai Island.” This is why the organizers of Sziget protected the island and why the area of Sziget Festival - one of the biggest public parks in Budapest - could survive the flood and now can serve the families and others to use it daily.

Throughout the protection activities the dams were raised 80 cms higher on 4 kilometers and approximately 2.500 stere sand and 12.000 stere of other materials were used to build more dams.

While at places, like the Margaret Island, many paid and centrally allocated teams were working to protect the island, on the area of Sziget Festival many Szitizens helped voluntarily to make the protection happen. Thanks to the non-stop duty lead by professionals, the publically owned parts of the island have survived the flood. However the bad shape of the dams made the Danube leak in, thus creating smaller lakes. Because of this now 25 special pumps are working, so the next Children’s Island can move back to its well-known location.

We would like to thank all of those who helped our work. Special thanks to the Helperek Volunteer Helpers public benefit organization, the volunteers of the Hungarian Baptist Aid, the Republic of Poland, the National Directorate General for Disaster Management and their 300 meter long mobile dam system.

Thank you for the professional help of the National Directorate General for Water and their mega-pumps, the police of the 3rd district and In-Kal Security for the protection! Many thanks to XXL Catering, for not letting the people working without food and drinks, for Tomido, Tranzorg and Nemesgép companies for ensuring the machines necessary and for Cleancode for the constant cleaning service.

Thanks a lot for the mayor of the city of Hatvan, for lending the pump of the city and for the person responsible at the Defensive Force to allow the protection activities. Finally, but not least a big thank you to Dániel Benis, the “hero of the Island of Freedom” and his team, who coordinated and organized the activities.

Thank you for everyone’s support! See you at Sziget Festival in August!

Source: Sziget Festival