Army engineers redirect river in flooded
Bosnia, easing burden on town
By Anthony Burgos,
Bosnia bureau
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and Stripes
Sgt. Nato Lopez of Company C, 648th Engineers Battalion, guards the site
where an SFOR soldier operates an excavator to clear the riverbed. |
BRATUNAC, Bosnia and Herzegovina — When rain pounded Bosnia last week, floods soon
overran many of the small villages.
But tons of water wasn’t the only problem: what was in the water caused even more
damage.
So many logs, tons of garbage and other debris clogged beneath one bridge in a village,
it caused the river to overflow its bank.
"About 350 houses were flooded," said Staff Sgt. Joel Jacobs, the leader of
the Earth Moving Platoon, Company C, 648th Engineers Battalion at Eagle Base.
Jacobs and six other soldiers traveled to Bratunac on Monday to clear a path for the
river so SFOR patrols can continue to patrol the area.
"It’s partly a humanitarian mission, and an SFOR freedom of movement
issue," Jacobs said as he stood on the riverbank watching the operator of an
earth-moving machine called an excavator. "We are digging up the riverbed about 150
meters upstream to redirect the river under the bridge."
Moving a river may be hard, but that’s exactly what this team set out to do.
First, they removed the blockage at the base of the bridge and dredged the river to
channel the water directly under the bridge. Then, they built up the bank on one side of
the river where the rushing waters scoured away the cement that protected a water pipe
that supplied the town.
Ivana Avramovic / Stars and Stripes
Bratunac residents watch as SFOR soldiers clear the Guber riverbed and repair a bridge
damaged in the last week's flood. |
"Everything was ripped up," said Relja Samokovic, a resident watching the
second day of repairs. He said the rushing waters caused close to $8,000 in damage to the
town’s water system. "The river cut the pipes like a razor."
Nemanja Avramovic, one of many young boys watching the soldiers from the bridge, said
his house wasn’t damaged by the flood, but his friend’s house had a foot of
water flowing through it.
"It’s good we got some help," Avramovic said.
"They are the experts," Samokovic added. "They look like expert
tradesmen."
But that wasn’t the crowd’s opinion the first day the peacekeepers rolled in
with the heavy equipment. Someone from another town claiming to be an engineer said the
soldiers weren’t doing the job correctly. "But after a little explanation, [the
crowd] understood," said Amela Uzicanin, an SFOR translator working with the
engineers.
On Tuesday afternoon, the soldiers had completed most of the dredging, and the cement
foundation was being poured to protect the new water pipes. Jacobs was confident that the
two-day project would be successful.
"We’re making sure the next time [it rains], the water stays in the riverbed
right where it belongs."
Back to June stories
Page Two news roundup
Stories from May, 2001
Stories from April, 2001
Stories from March, 2001
Stories from February,2001
Stories from January, 2001
Stories from December, 2000
Stories from November, 2000
Stories from October, 2000
Stories from August and September, 2000
Stories from June and July, 2000
Home |
