Memories of Floods in Banat

Nick Tullius... Remembers
May 10, 2005

I remember floods in Alexanderhausen, but they were minor compared to what is happening now. I think that especially the Banat lowland ("Banater Heide") was always threatened by high water levels of the Marosch, other parts were under the influence of the Temesch and Bega.  When I was very small, my grandfather's beautiful young peach trees in our garden were all killed by high groundwater level. For a short time, if you put a spate into the garden soil, there was water. We did not have a basement, but the neighbor's basements were full of water.

And I remember a temporary pumping station set up to pump water away from a pond in the village.  In fact, I went with some older boys to catch some fish in that water, probably the first fish I ate in my life!

I also remember a trip to Lowrin, on the "Segediner Landstrasse" (that is the Temeswar - Segedin/Szeget highway) on my father's bicycle, when small amounts of water were running across the highway, between the ditches on the sides.

Some low-elevation fields may have become unusable for a year or so, but there were no major consequences, such as demolished houses or diseases.  And the water usually retreated in a reasonably short time. Also, with the hot summer, a lot of it must have evaporated; in fact dryness (lack of rain) was often a problem in the summer.

During my years in Temeswar/Timisoara I am quite certain that there were no floods of any significance, because I would surely have heard about it.

To big question to me is: When the current flood developed, what exactly was the condition of dykes, retaining walls, and pumping stations, that were supposed to be able to take care of any floods that could reasonably be expected? I am not an expert in that branch of engineering, but a colleague wrote me that the moneys allocated for that work were misappropriated and the installations were not up to scratch.  But could this happen simultaneously in Romania and in Serbia?

I find it extremely interesting that Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn, in his novel "Glocken der Heimat", describes a very similar situation resulting in the loss of a Danube-Swabian village on the Theiss/Tisza/Tisa...

Best regards,
Nick Tullius