Foreign experts are working together with the Protection and Rescue Directorate to survey by helicopter the flooded areas in the Tetovo region. The goal is to determine what exactly happened on August 3 and what are the reasons for the overflowing of the rivers and the eroding of the ground that overwhelmed several villages.
From the Directorate they say they will survey the ground in the next twelve days with the use of the EU civil protection mechanism. The survey will conclude the recommendations for avoiding floods and mudslides in the future.
-The purpose of all activities is to use the civil protection tools to get satellite imagery of the current situation around Tetovo, as well as to conduct an analysis of the situation on the ground. This will result in recommendations by bodies of the Government and the local municipality in how to treat the ground in order to avoid a catastrophe in the future- said Ivica Naumovski from the Protection and Rescue Directorate.
Directorate experts say there is erosion on the Sharplanina massif which prompted expectations that the region underneath may sustain floods, but not to the extent seen recently. The experts would not comment whether the uncontrolled cutting of the forest and the unregulated river beds contributed to the catastrophic floods.
In the coming days, besides conducting surveys from the air, the Directorate and the foreign experts will conduct terrain-vehicle analysis on the ground in order to bring conclusions for future events.
In the storm that caught the Tetovo region six people perished, over 70 were injured and 400 households sustained serious damages. Large swaths of arable land were also destroyed.
