NATURAL CATASTROPHE - whose fault? (An Article, CAE level)

Have you ever wondered, looking at a stream, what it could be if one day water flowing silently became an element that runs so rapidly? The truth is that we’re afraid of floods. We’re trying to foresee them, but we pay attention to big rivers mostly, whereas small streams are often a cause of serious destructions, too.

Dunajec, which is a big river in the south of Poland, didn’t cause many devastations during the flood near New Sacz in July 2001. It was a small stream called Kamienica that damaged a great deal of forests, meadows and people’s houses. A stream, which is normally two metres wide, overflowed its banks and water was within a radius of four hundred metres. Not only did that flood deprive people of their houses and all their goods and chattels they had, but it also made them start asking questions who was guilty. People are mostly responsible for the greenhouse effect, excessive cutting of forests and wrong flood-control. As a result, floods are of frequent occurrence on the Earth.

Flood is a terrible element. I’ve never been too certain about that, but my friends saw events that happened in July 2001 in the flesh. They think that people should counteract floods by reasonable managing water resources on the terrains which are the most liable to the occurrence of these natural catastrophes. We can’t subjugate the nature, because in every moment it can take everything that belong to it away from us.