Attila the Hun? No just Attila Nyikos

To be honest I was a little skeptical about this week’s field experience. When I heard we would be learning about red sludge, again, I thought I would be hearing the same facts and asking the same questions. However, our lecture by Attila Nyikos introduced me to new facts and he gave us new information that I had not heard before. This field experience was very informative and we covered topics from disaster relief to preventative measures to specific facts about red sludge and red sludge relief efforts. I would say this lecture was different because Attila works for disaster relief and because of that knows knew very specific facts about the disaster and relief work that went into it. I think that because he wasn’t a scientist I felt like I understood what he was saying more. He described exactly what red sludge was and how it comes to being and I completely got it, mostly because it was a very top-of-the-surface explanation. Attila was also very funny and his lecture was extremely engaging which is always a good thing

What Attila compared his agency to, to us, so that we could have a better understanding of what he did and be able to put what he was saying and relate it to real-life situations.

Attila first mentioned that he was the head of International Relations of Disaster Management in which the disaster management was actually a subordinate body of The Minister of Interior. He compared his work with FEMA but did mention that there was a crucial difference between the two in that Hungary has fire-fighters as part of their disaster management team where as FEMA does nt. I thought this was a little strange because one would think that fire fighters would be very crucial to have on a disaster relief team. I know that surrounding towns and cities send their fire-fighters but having ones specifically for disaster management could mean special training and maybe a more efficient way when going about relief efforts. 

 

Picture of the 2006 flooding in Budapest

Something Attila showed us were the major disasters over the last 10 years and a majority of them concerned flooding. I asked whether the Hungarian government had a specific budget for specific disasters, for example a “flood budget” and if they did, if one budget was higher than another. He said they did not have specific budgets for specific disasters and just had an overarching budget that concerned relief and recovery and so on. Here is another 2 cents I would like to put in when I say that I think after seeing the disasters and noticing that about half were floods, the Hungarian government should have a budget when it concerns flood relief. You could invest in special equipment and special training on flood relief instead of having an overall budget that includes disasters very rare to Hungary. I am not saying to completely forget about tsunamis or other natural disasters that can not be predicted but to focus and give more time to disasters that have clearly been happening and probably will continue to happen. 

Didn't want this to reach the Danube. Thank goodness the underwater dikes worked!

Like I said before I was very impressed with how much Attila knew about the red sludge disaster and how well he explained it. I was very interested in the under-water dikes that were set up and used to catch all red mud particles headed for the rivers. I had never heard this mentioned before and I thought it was a very good idea. I don’t really understand the science completely but what I got out of it was that dikes were set up underground and they caught the red sludge particles and stopped them from reaching the Danube, which was extremely important. Another thing Attila said that I thought was interesting was he told us that the original dam was made up of ash and cement and water. He made a comparison to a bar of chocolate and a piece of wood. He said that if you put pressure on a chocolate bar it will start to crack and then eventually shatter but if you try and break a piece of wood it bends and slowly breaks in two. He said that the dam break was a hard break like the chocolate and it just shattered without any warning. If it had been like the wood, people would have seen cracking and been able to fix it. I really liked this metaphor and it made the “surprise” aspect of the whole dam breaking more believable.

This lecture was definitely informative and Attila Nyikos was also funny and engaging making the whole experience that much better. I guess I’ll see you all later and keep on keepin’ on!