After the deluge...

Embach is today cut off from the world. It is an irony that however hard the winter, however much snow falls, the roads are kept passable and traffic climbs the steep, winding road from the valley with few delays. But after a couple of days of rain, some of it very heavy, we are not only cut off from the valley below. Even if we could get down there, the main route through the valley is blocked in many places, in both directions.

Many of our roads have steep rocks, woods or meadows on one side and a vertiginous drop on the other. Rain like this causes mudslides and these can be lethal as well as inconvenient. In the past night at least three people in neighbouring villages have been killed by mudslides, in one case being pushed, while driving along a main road, into the river.

Often, homes are at the foot of a slope, or in a potentially vulnerable position, where, in many cases, they have stood for decades. Residents in these exceptional rainy periods are aware that mountains are not static. Mountains move.

Behind Embach to the north is the Plaike, a moraine left by the ice ages. This high, wooded pile of gravel and stones, slopes  steeply 400m down to the Salzach river. In 1794, after a period of prolonged heavy rain, a huge lump of this slid down blocking the river and causing a dam that caused a build up of water flooding upstream villages. It was a year before the water burst through the blockage.

Here in Embach, as well as across the province of Salzburg, the heroes are the volunteer fire service. Called out at 1.30am, our well-trained volunteers have for some 20 hours, continuously dealt with mudslides that closed both of the roads leading out of the village. Homes have been damaged and some filled with mud, families evacuated and people brought to safety.

Most villages have their own volunteer fire service. They have modern equipment and are trained to a high standard. Called into action by a siren which sounds across the village, and by SMS messages, they can be on the scene within minutes of the alarm sounding. Being from Embach our firemen have the advantage of local knowledge: how to find remote houses and who the residents are, where water is available, and how to deal with livestock.

The forecast is that the deluge is abating and we can be sure that in the fastest possible time, the council workers and the fire service volunteers will have the roads open and the village looking its usual tidy self. The sun will come out and at last the farmers can begin cutting the meadows currently knee-deep in grasses and wildflowers. Before long, the great downpour of 2013 will be a point of comparison, like the big snows of 2012.