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Exactly ten years ago, on October 4, 2010, the news of a serious tragedy shook the country: the wall of cassette 10 of the Ajka tailings pond was broken, the destructive 6-700 thousand cubic meters of red mud that runs through the streets of the villages of Kolontár and Devecser, reaching the end. For Somlóvásárhely.
The red mud disaster left a deep mark on the villagers, as not only was the material and ecological damage significant, but the grout that washed away waves from one and a half to two meters high claimed the lives of ten innocent people Hundreds of injured in sinister days. Many, leaving their values behind, were forced to flee the streets to save their lives.
The tragedy of Kolontár and Devecser
The mass of red clay would reach the villages at any moment, the owner and the son of the restaurant next to the Devecser train station told me, and then they added that they looked at each other, crowded into the building, as the price took all with astonishing force, even trailers, cars and seconds. Swept. But there was a car that literally turned upside down in the garage from the massive amount of mud.
They themselves can only owe their luck to the fact that their restaurant escaped disaster in a relatively sheltered place in a relatively sheltered place, but all the houses from the city center to the train station were washed away through the mud. “This is how our neighbors escaped us,” they summed up with bitter resignation.
Material gushed out of the tailings pond along Torna Creek and the railroad and flowed with greater intensity through the settlements. In the stream water, all living things were killed by the corrosive material, even bacteria, and the alkali reached Marcal.
On that damn day, the disaster overwritten everything in Devecser and Kolontár, and ten years passed in vain: although neighbors had been evacuated from hundreds of dangerous properties, the remains of a stable building still show traces of mud spilling up to five feet. nor will tragedy fade from his heart.
Photo: Indafotó / sinpityu, Tamás Katalin
The tragedy has long paralyzed the locals, for whom the memory remains a sore point. No verdicts were handed down for eight and a half years in the case of those responsible for the incident, in February 2019, the defendant in the first degree, the former head of Mal Zrt., Was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for negligence of public danger . The second-degree defendant, the company’s technical deputy director, was sentenced to two years in prison. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and fourteenth defendants were sentenced to suspended prison terms, seventh-place fines, thirteenth-order reprimands, and five defendants were acquitted of all charges.
Photo: Country Album / dia1965, Tamás Katalin
However, human lives were lost there, many were injured by alkaline and corrosive substances, and the health of the locals was deteriorated in the long term by pollution: subsequent press reports showed an increase in asthma, hypertension and system disorders. immunological, behavioral disorders in villages after disaster. Not to mention incurable spiritual wounds, grief, and anxiety that human irresponsibility and negligence can match the work of many decades with the earth in minutes. Although the residential area designed by Imre Makovecz was built on the border of Kolontár to compensate the residents who lost their personal property, uncertainty and fear lingered on the people for a long time.
(Images: Tamás Katalin, Country Album / dia1965, Indafotó / sinpityu, soldier, Nero 11.)
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