Tearing down houses to rebuild them elsewhere: Shocked by the floods that devastated Slovenia this summer, a mayor opted for a radical approach, convinced of the urgency of adapting to climate change.
• Also read: Six dead after severe flooding in Slovenia
A year after a fire of unprecedented proportions, this country of two million inhabitants suffered a historic storm in August that devastated two-thirds of the territory, although the loss of life was limited thanks to an efficient alarm system (six dead).
In total, 180 of the 212 communities were damaged, more than 100 bridges and kilometers of roads were destroyed. According to the government, no less than 10 billion euros will be needed for reconstruction over a period of five years.
The warmer the planet, the more water vapor the atmosphere contains (around 7% for each additional degree), particularly increasing the risk of heavy precipitation in certain regions of the world.
Combined with other critical factors such as urbanization and land use planning, these more intense rainfall events favor flooding.
Slovenia is particularly exposed due to its location at the intersection of the Mediterranean, the Alps and the Pannonian Plain of Central Europe.
Restraint
60 kilometers north of the capital Ljubljana, the first city council of Braslovce saw the Savinja River overflowing and flooding around a hundred houses on both banks.
A nightmare he doesn’t want to experience again. “My job is to help people and ensure their safety, which is not the case under the current conditions,” explains Tomaz Zohar while showing AFP his plans for the region.
The project envisages building new homes on unexposed land by 2025, with the current land becoming state property and serving as a buffer zone to protect homes in the event of a flood.
The mayor is now waiting for the government’s approval and hopes that he will show “wisdom and courage”. Especially since the liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob himself called for seizing the opportunity to “rebuild through transformation and better prepare for future disasters”.
Without comment, the executive branch states that it is looking for “suitable solutions” for a “long-term reconstruction process” on a case-by-case basis.
The residents in the village are divided.
“This is the fourth time we have been flooded, we want to be relocated,” says Darja Primozic, quoted by the daily Delo, describing how she is gripped by “panic” whenever it rains. “Fear cuts us to the bone,” she admits.
But not everyone is ready to leave their homes, preferring to blame the poor maintenance of banks.
“If it had been done correctly, we would not be in danger and there would be no reason to leave,” says Bojan Arcan, sitting on the veranda of the house where he has lived for 40 years in an idyllic green setting.
“Never the same again”
Wooden furniture is still drying in the yard, remnants of the torrential rains. But why should the 43-year-old entrepreneur, who says he has collected more than 100 signatures, panic “when the next flood might not happen for another hundred years?”
Climatologist Lucka Kajfez Bogataj, for her part, welcomes the initiative of the mayor, “who was the only one who understood what it was about,” but regrets that a significant part of the population puts the climate changes caused by humans into perspective.
“They imagine that what they experienced was a one-off event,” notes the former IPCC expert. “But we must tell them the hard and cruel truth: the changes are accelerating and things will never be the same again.”
In this context, “it makes absolutely no sense to put the houses back in exactly the same place,” she told AFP, predicting many climate-related displaced people in Europe.
The recent floods sent “a very clear signal,” adds Janez Potocnik, former EU Commissioner for the Environment.
“The danger is now present everywhere, even in areas that were used to stable weather conditions in the past,” he emphasizes, also referring to Spain, Greece and Italy, which were affected by extreme phenomena this summer.