Taking a Chance on Chance By Darren Baker

česky

Geographically speaking, the United States is rich in natural disasters. Whether it's tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes, brush fires or volcanoes, there's always something disrupting life somewhere. I lived in every region of the country and managed to go my whole life without experiencing a single natural disaster. And then I came to the Czech Republic.

The geography of Central Europe makes it much more prone to political and economic disasters than natural ones. Where hurricanes and tornadoes went missing, invading armies usually kept things stirred up. So when a natural disaster does hit, it warrants a grand, almost biblical title, like the Millennium Flood that hit Moravia and Silesia in 1997.

Timing has a lot to do with it. Had the Millennium Flood come three years later, it might've had to wait a thousand years to see if the title would stand. As things turned out, some residents affected by the flood could have easily waited that long before finally getting the warning to evacuate. The delay ended up costing them just about everything, including whatever faith they had in their local government. When one such community angrily denounced the authorities for not warning them sooner, an official lamely told them that they, the city, wanted to get the word out, but none of them could find a bullhorn. When asked why they simply didn't send city employees out to tell the people in person, he replied that, well, they couldn't find them, either.

Afterwards, many officials explained that, given it was their first major flood, they were literally overwhelmed by the force of it. Try telling that to the Germans, who mobilized an entire army to save thousands of homes and offices. It should be noted that they had several advantages over their neighbors. One, they had more time to prepare for the onslaught, being downstream. Two, the government of Poland provided them with a convenient drainage area by taking next to no action on their side of the river. And three, Germans are better at mobilizing armies.

Back in Moravia, the situation in Frýdek-Místek was tense because two rivers intersect within the town, and each of them has a dam upstream. Adding to the tension was the fact that one of the dams bears the not-so-reassuring name of Chance. When rumors started flying that this dam was weakening on one side, many people were convinced the city was about to be flooded in several meters of water. At times it felt like I was the only person here who believed the dam would hold, who had any faith in Communist-era engineering.

That faith was reinforced even after I learned that an evacuation had been ordered for a mental health institution lying just below the dam itself. I figured the Communists, friends and protectors of life's most unfortunate classes, would never choose such a high-risk location for a mental health institution unless they were damn sure the dam was built correctly. That got people to shaking their heads and wondering whether I might not belong in this same institution once the crisis was over.

When the rain finally stopped, hordes of people gathered on both sides of the river to marvel at all the water rushing past them. I met a friend there, one of those who tried to warn me about anything built by the Communists. He reminded me that we were all standing there at our own risk because the Chance could still burst with so much water in the reservoir. I wasn't particularly concerned until he mentioned something I didn't know beforehand. According to him, the dam was plagued from the start by people stealing whatever construction material they could from the work site. It's no coincidence, he added, that several hundred homes and cottages were built at the same time the dam went up. Very nice ones, too. It would've been a shame to see all of them flushed down the river.