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Slovakia in mourning over damaged High Tatras and storm deaths

The forest in the High Tatras National Park mountain range has virtually disappeared after the windstorm that passed across Slovakia on Friday. The uprooted and broken trees amount to about three million cubic meters of wood. Damage to forest property is in billions of crowns. People say trees fell like dominoes.

“Now I can imagine what the country looks like after exploding an atomic bomb. It was horrible”, says Miroslav Skvarek from the Children Anti-tuberculosis Sanatorium in Dolny Smokovec. About 50 children were trapped in the hospital and waited hours for help.

The situation in Slovakia is an emergency, Agriculture Minister Zsolt Simon said at a news conference in Tatranska Lomnica on Saturday. According to preliminary estimates from the TANAP state forestry company, the damaged coniferous forest amounts to about 2.5 million cubic meters of softwood which represents 90 percent of the annual extraction in this category of wood in Slovakia. Because of this, the minister with immediate effect ordered a halt to all planned softwood extraction activity throughout Slovakia. "This emergency situation requires these extraordinary measures," he said. At the same time, he with immediate effect issued a ban for citizens to enter forests with the exception of people employed to do forestry work.