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NOVI SAD, Yugoslavia, Nov 10 (AFP) -
Experts warned Wednesday of ice floods with potentially catastrophic consequences, unless the debris from of three bridges here destroyed during the NATO bombing campaign is cleared before the oncoming winter.
At present the remains of the bridges over the Danube makes "the passage of icebreakers -- and therefore a proper defense against ice floods -- absolutely impossible," a report by the Belgrade-based waterpower institute Jaroslav Cerni said.
For icebreakers to be able to move freely, it is essential that the debris is removed as well as the cable bridge installed after the raids as a makeshift crossing over the river, the report said.
Milos Miloradovic, the institute's head of flood management, told reporters that "there is a real danger of ice floods with possible catastrophic consequences ... It would be enough to have several cold days in a row to have ice-floes forming along the river," Miloradovic said.
Ice floods are caused when the river freezes up, causing water heading downstream to spill into the low-lying plains that cover Vojvodina, the northern Serbian province that borders Hungary.
The last ice floods hit this area of the Danube in 1956. In 1987, when the water level rose 3.7 meters (by over 10 feet), large-scale flooding was only avoided by concerted action by Yugoslavia and neighbouring countries involving the use of icebreakers.
Institute officials said they had informed the government about the potential flood problems, but there had been no response.
Zoran Vapa, a government official in Vojvodina, rejected the possibility of ice floods as "only theoretical," Beta news agency reported.
Vapa said that Yugoslavia did not have the necessary equipment to remove the wreckage from the river, a task which he estimated would take between six and 12 months.
But "the wreckage will not be removed ... until those who destroyed these bridges, rebuild them," Vapa said,
Six months after the end of NATO's bombing campaign, the twisted remains of the three Novi Sad bridges still jut from the river, blocking water-borne traffic along one of southeastern Europe's most important trade routes.
Efforts to clear the river have been blocked by Belgrade's insistence on making any clean-up operation conditional on European help in rebuilding the bridges.