As the water levels fall and the true devastation is revealed, there will be time to reflect on what happened and constructively act to make things better in the future.
By ANDI BALLA
Unprecedented flooding in northwestern Albania has dominated the headlines and the national psyche for more than a week. It’s a major blow to people’s lives and the area’s economy. Thankfully, there was no loss of life. And the water is retreating.
As the water levels fall and the true devastation is revealed, there will be time to reflect on what happened and constructively act to make things better in the immediate future and decide what work needs to be done to avoid such floods in the long-run.
On the positive end of things, there were nice signs on how the floods brought Albanians together. In addition to international help, Albanian regions from unaffected areas from the country’s southern tip to its central region sent what they could — from cash for the relief effort to food for starving farm animals.
The Albanian Armed Forces, whose one major mission in times of peace is to act in natural disasters like these, acted professionally in their first major scale operation since Albania joined NATO. They saved lives, distributed aid and seamlessly merged their efforts with neighboring countries who offered rescue teams, helicopters and material aid to help their NATO ally.
Tenacious politicking that has kept the country wound up since the elections last year, took a back seat to the floods in the early days of the disaster. It’s best that in national emergencies like flooding cooperation should supplant political discussion. It is short-sighted to do otherwise.
And to a large degree, in the early days of the emergency, when lives could have been at stake, politicians focused on dealing with the emergency first, politics later. They deserve credit for that, but the truce did not hold for long, and there is no doubt, a political angle of the story will develop and be fiercely fought.
In addition to being a human story, the floods are an economic disaster. The economic repercussions will be immense. Albania is a mountainous country, and unfortunately most people live downstream where the flooding happened. The flooded areas were also valuable agricultural and pastoral land and the full calculation of the financial damages will only be known weeks from now.
There is the immediate bill of paying for the emergency situation and there is the long-term bill to cover the damages to people’s homes and farms, since much of the flooding was tied to Albania’s hydro electric power production system. (Investigations have started on whether there was anything that could have been done differently to prevent some of the flooding.)
Flood insurance is an unknown concept in Albania, and the government has promised to pay for damages, but often such compensation programs don’t fully work for those who are supposed to benefit.
In addition, the compensation is likely to dig a larger hole in the budget deficit as even if all income from the hydroelectric power plants is shifted to compensate the flood victims, it won’t be enough to cover all the costs, according to the latest projections.
