Heads of MoI and Emergencies Service deny Communists' summer flood accusation

Minister of the Interior Victor Catan and Mihai Harabagiu, the head of the Service for Civil Protection and Emergencies, held a news conference today to dismiss the allegations made by the Party of Communists that the floods this summer were the result of an intended explosion of a levee on the Prut River, Info-Prim Neo reports. Victor Catan said the main cause of the flooding was the abundant rainfall which caused at least seven flood waves. The most devastating one, the fifth, exceeded the critical water level by 6 meters. Another cause, according to the minister, was the oldness of the levees, which were built in the late 1960s to last 40 years. Last not least, the human factor was also to blame, and namely the unauthorized installation of pipes and construction of ponds. Victor Catan added that all the explosions are carried out by special crews and are very well documented. There were six controlled explosions in the flooded area, but all were carried out after the levee in Nemteni yielded. This was done to evacuate floodwater from the Prut lowlands. Mihai Harabagiu explained for his part that if an explosion had been carried out in Nemteni, as the Communists claimed, the crowns of the trees would have been affected and specific odors would have been sensed in the area. But none of this was observed. Last week the Party of Communists presented a 9-minute short which suggested that the Moldovan government had secretly allowed Romania to blow up a levee in the Moldovan village of Nemteni in order to save the Romanian city of Galati from flooding at the expense of several Moldovan villages. Both the Moldovan Government and the Romanian Embassy in Chisinau denied the allegation.