Severe floods killed nine people during March and affected one in four residents in the Trans-Carpathian area of western Ukraine, reports Andrei Chuprikov, director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) in Ukraine.

Last week Chuprikov visited the areas of worst damage accompanied by Heriberto Muller, director of ADRA in the Euro-Asia region. “Many people lost everything in the flood, but they are enthusiastic and facing the situation strongly,” says Muller. “They will recover what they can and rebuild.”

Volunteers are dispensing food and medicine, pumping water out of houses, and cleaning up debris. In addition, ADRA workers transported a group of homeless children to Hungary, where they will be fed and cared for until their families have safe homes again.

The flood waters covered 255 towns and villages in Ukraine, damaging 33,774 houses and many roads and bridges. Most affected are the regions of Beregovo and Vinogradov. In late March, 10,000 people remained homeless. The violent flood tore up garbage pits and cemetery graves, resulting in contaminated water and the spread of dysentery and other diseases. Nearby mountain areas in Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia also report significant flood destruction.

Muller says that subsistence farmers in the rural Carpathian Mountains keep their annual harvest of potatoes, cabbage, and other vegetables in small cellars under their homes. When water flooded the cellars, countless families lost their primary source of food until summer. Many livestock also died, and fields that had already been planted were completely submerged. ADRA and other relief agencies hope to provide emergency food for three months until the first summer crops are ready.

Heavy rains, warmer than average temperatures, and excessive logging in recent years have caused frequent floods in the Carpathians. Ten Ukrainians died and 24,000 were left homeless in a 1998 flood.