Vucic: Danger still not over

BELGRADE - Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday that the situation in Serbia was somewhat better, but that the threat from floods would remain over the next two days, mostly along the river Sava.

"The end is not close, but we have more hope today than we had yesterday," he said at a meeting of the national headquarters for emergencies.

The stabilisation has unfortunately occurred as the result of the Sava overflowing in other countries of the region (Bosnia-Herzegovina), but another rise in the water level will happen by Wednesday and that time should be used to prepare defences, he stated.

The prime minister thanked the people of Serbia who had displayed unselfish dedication and assisted in rescuing those threatened by the floods.

He particularly thanked those who had helped build sandbag levees in Sabac and Sremska Mitrovica, where the Sava was on the rise, adding that 12,500 from Belgrade alone had responded to his call for help that same night.
"It is the Serbia's youth and it shows the kind of future that we have," he noted.

The organisation was much better than in wealthier and more developed countries, even though Serbia had been hit by a disaster ten times worse, Vucic pointed out, adding that the European commissioner for crisis response had told him over the phone the EU was impressed by the level of mobilisation among the Serbian people.

The Sava's water level near Sabac is 660 cm above normal, which is 1 m higher than the previous record level, the participants of the meeting said, adding that an efficient defence was possible up to 680 cm, while anything higher than that was difficult to combat.