Index – Household – Caustic alkali swelled up like lava

Hungary’s industrial catastrophe with the biggest ecological consequences so far started after 12 noon on October 4, 2010, when the X cassette of the red mud tank of the alumina factory in Ajka broke, and

He reached Kolontár at a speed of about 30-35 km / h, and in a few minutes Devecsert passed through the park of his castle. The flood washed away the deepest streets of the small town in two-meter-high waves.

The X cassette dam, which began construction in 1989 and red mud fill in 1998, shifted due to increased loading and cracks appeared at the ends. Through these, the liquid stored in the cassette was drained with almost the same amount of sludge, suddenly leaving an amount of 800,000 cubic meters through a 60 meter wide opening.

People in the towers

The first alarm came from Kolontár at 12:28 to the Veszprém County Disaster Management Directorate, and Ajka firefighters arrived at the scene in eight minutes. An alarm was once received from Devecser in the afternoon, where by then people were already shouting from rooftops, pylons and trees for help.

In addition to caring for the injured, parade routes were cleared, vehicles were swept, animal carcasses were collected, slurry was pumped from basements and acid gas cylinders were collected.

Since the early morning of October 5, intensive work was carried out at Marcal to ensure that the red mud contamination caused as little damage as possible and did not reach the Danube. Four days later, there was danger of another rupture of the dam, so the government ordered the evacuation of the entire population of Kolontár, preparing Devecser for eviction. Fortunately, no further breakage of the dam occurred, and in the meantime, a six-hundred-meter-long, three-and-a-half meter high circle was completed to protect the Kolontár.

What is red mud? Red mud is a strongly alkaline substance produced as a by-product of alumina production and contains toxic metal compounds. It is a hazardous waste, it erodes the skin like burns, but is otherwise non-toxic. Alkaline wastes, when released into nature, have a devastating effect on wildlife. It also contains traces of radioactive metals, but due to its low activity, the environmental impact of direct radiation is negligible.

Three hundred seven house demolitions

The disaster affected 47 residential properties in Kolontár, 268 in Devecser and 21 in Somlóvásárhely. A total of 307 houses had to be demolished. The mud flooded more than 1,000 hectares of agricultural land.

The compensation was resolved through grant agreements: one hundred and ten newly built properties were selected, one hundred and twenty-one second-hand properties were acquired and the same number was requested for redemption in cash. By October 4, 2011, a Memorial Park serving urban rehabilitation was completed in Devecser on the site of the flooded part of the city, and a National Monument to the Victims of the Red Mud Disaster in Kolontár.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated on October 5, 2010 that a human error may have occurred, which is being investigated:

We do not know of any signs that there are natural causes for the disaster. We live with the suspicion that it is a human omission. The whole country wants to know who is responsible for this tragedy.

Someone has to answer!

Fifteen people have been charged with negligent misconduct resulting in death, damage to the environment and nature caused by negligence, and waste management violations. The defendants included the manager of Magyar Alumínium Termelő és Kereskedelmi Zrt. (Mal Zrt.), The director of technical services, the head of laboratory and environmental protection and the manager of the hydrate production plant.

In its judgment of January 28, 2016, delivered more than five years after the events, the Veszprém Court of First Instance acquitted all the accused in the absence of a crime. According to the court, the cause of the disaster was a “loss of stability of the subsoil”, which caused the failure of the embankment. Judge Györgyi Szabó, president of the Supreme Court, highlighted in the reasoning of the sentence that Mal Zrt “does not sit on the bench” in the lawsuit. In relation to responsibility, he cited György Pálinkás, a former criminal judge. According to the story, in one case, the prosecutor declared: “Therefore, someone must be held accountable for a terrible crime!” Look at Pálinkás:

It is not someone who has to answer, but the culprit.

Civil, administrative and other cases brought against the company are not the same as strict liability investigated in criminal proceedings. The court examined the criminal responsibility of the people, for which acquittal was issued, the judge said. In February 2013, Mal Zrt. Eventually, he lost his claim for damages, for which the company was ordered to be liquidated, and then the state-owned Mal Zrt., Whose sole shareholder became Magyar Nemzeti Vagyonkezelő Zrt.

Inappropriate judgment

However, on February 6, 2017, the Győr Sentencing Chamber, which was acting in the second instance, overturned the judgment of the General Court. According to the reasoning, the court of first instance violated several procedural rules, its sentence is not susceptible of review, so a repeated procedure is necessary. A month later, the adjudication panel also announced that the Győr Court would continue the retrial in the first instance because the President of the Veszprém Court had indicated that he did not have a judge who had the right to act in the case and was not excluded from the new one. judgment.

In repeated first instance proceedings, the Győr Court on February 4, 2018 pleaded guilty to ten defendants. The first defendant, Zoltán B., former general director of Mal Zrt., Was sentenced to two months and six months, and the second accused, D. József, former technical director of the company, to two years in prison for public negligence and violation of waste management. The defendants in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and fourteenth orders received a conditional prison sentence, fines in the seventh order and reprimands in the thirteenth order. And five defendants were acquitted of all charges.

due to the establishment of guilt and qualification, as well as aggravation, for which the case was referred to the Győr Sentencing Board.

In his defense, János Bánáti, lawyer for the first defendant, Zoltán B., stated that the repeated sentence was erroneous and illegal, in part because the judicial council had disregarded procedural principles, so the facts established by him were unfounded.

Aggravated sanctions

With its judgment of December 13, 2019, the Győr Sentencing Board partially changed the judgment of the trial court. In the case of seven defendants, the sentence was aggravated and three defendants were sentenced to prison.

• The first indicted CEO was sentenced to four years in prison,
• sentence the director of technical services of the second accused to three years in prison,
• while third, sixth and eighth degree defendants were commuted to suspended sentences of two years of probation suspended for four years of probation.
• The dispatcher of the fourth defendant was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for a probationary period of three years.
• aggravated the sentence of the fifth degree hydrate plant manager charged in fifth degree, who was also responsible for operating the red mud cartridges, to two and a half years in prison.

However, with the occurrence of a public threat that claimed the lives of several people, various breaches of duty were partly causally linked to the testimony of the accused. Among other things, they failed to establish a monitoring system that would have predicted adverse subsoil processes. It was also not verified why the run time of the leachate pumps along the side wall of the cassette increased before the sludge flow. And when the side wall of the red mud cassette broke, they didn’t notify authorities for more than half an hour.

(Cover image: Kolontár in captivity of red mud. In the broken dam of the Magyar Alumínium Termelõ és Kereskedelmi Zrt reservoir. (MAL Zrt.) Near Ajka, about a million cubic meters of red mud was spilled on 4 October 2010. Due to the dam rupture, it affects the population and wildlife of an area of ​​almost 40,000 square kilometers.

MTI photo: H. Szabó Sándor)