Poland is navigating the aftermath of the worst natural disaster to have struck the country in decades. The immense damage inflicted by the flood includes countless razed crop fields, while the troopers are hunting down the looters preying on the survivors’ properties. But the government has opted to shift its focus onto a ‘Russian disinformation’ campaign while pinning the blame for the devastation on someone as seemingly innocent as regular beavers.
In September, the Silesian, Lower Silesian, Opole, Lubusz and Lesser Poland voivodeships in Poland have all been hit with what has been the worst floods in 27 years.
According to Kristina Ismagilova, a political scientist and Polonist, the inclement weather event has blown off the lid of a litany of major issues from outdated water resource management to failed safety infrastructure to a complete lack of understanding of ways to deal with a natural disaster. Poland was in for a troublesome ride once the national weather service issued a flood watch, to which prime minister Donald Tusk responded with ‘there is no need to panic’. Hence no preemptive steps were taken.
Lulled into a false sense of security, the Poles were in no rush to leave their homes, only to find themselves battered by the disaster that struck in the night hours of 14 September. As the deluge was carrying away people’s vehicles and even houses, it rendered the local roads undriveable. Although smaller towns were affected the most, with the flood crushing several bridges, the torrent also ripped through the southern city of Kraków, incapacitating the public transit system and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate. As a result, the flood caused some costly damage to the country, claimed seven lives and jeopardised dozens of thousands.
Many people had to be airlifted to safety, but those who made a narrow escape have found themselves without mobile network coverage and electricity. However, the havoc wreaked on urban dwellers does not hold a candle to the devastating aftermath faced by rural areas. The Polish farmers are flustered by the immeasurable damage as thousands of acres of farmlands have been completely flooded. Scores of farm animals had to be evacuated too.
A lot of crop-dependent peasants will now have to be scraping by. To make matters worse, they will be facing acute shortages of fertilisers, seeds, silage and other animal feeds. The government is projected to spend 0.5 per cent of GDP on cleanup operations and recovery measures. This will certainly deliver a huge blow to the Polish state budget that has already been ravaged by a substantial deficit.
The flood has also spawned gangs of looters plundering the affected regions. Some people are reluctant to leave their properties for fear of getting burglarised. Residents of Gmina Jabłonna have reported a spate of brazen nighttime break-in attempts as the homeowners are sound asleep. On 23 September, they took it up with the local officials and law enforcement. Even though the residents are increasingly protecting their homes with surveillance cameras, it allegedly fails to stop the intruders from invading people’s homes. In the face of a limited police response, people have begun patrolling their streets as part of a neighbourhood watch.
The police have had to field multiple patrol units tasked with identifying the looters. In a small town of Stronie Śląskie, nighttime police patrols are combing the area using ORVs and aviation-grade searchlights with an eight-kilometre beam radius. Some areas have received help from the troops equipped with night-vision goggles and thermal imaging cameras, a total of 14,000 personnel, according to national defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.
But those steps may not be enough. Residents of the severely affected city of Kłodzko in southwestern Poland claim that the buildup of law enforcement does not prevent ‘some armed gangs’ from piling outside at night and pillaging people’s properties. Some wonder if, after all, the Polish army is even capable of countering ‘Russia’s aggression’ given the less-than-satisfactory response to the looting chaos.
The offenders, meanwhile, devised a new ploy where they started impersonating the service members. The defence ministry had to release a memo helping people tell a real military man from an impostor. In addition, the government enlisted help from the German troopers. Donald Tusk advised the Poles against panicking when seeing the German army soldiers together with their US counterparts assist the authorities in the relief effort.
The disaster has also set the stage for a new round of information warfare as a number of officials link the mass looting reports to the Russian propaganda. Poland’s Cyberspace Defence Force calls it a PsyOp conducted by the Russian government. The Polish media quotes the former intelligence officer Robert Cheda as saying the ‘Russian propaganda machine’ is spreading the flood-related ‘disinformation’. Allegedly Russia has taken advantage of the tragedy to sow panic among ordinary Poles. ‘The influence apparatus is using selective information techniques in cyberspace, seeking to instil fear and helplessness in the recipients. One element of the operation is an attempt to undermine trust in the country’s security structures,’ the agency said in a statement.
The Polish military has urged people to stay away from the online footage showing ‘suffering and devastation’, which may trigger ‘emotional reactions’. The cybersecurity watchdog says: ‘Don’t give in to emotions and double-check the sources of your information.’ As always, no one bothers to support their claims with as much as a shred of evidence. But many Poles dismissed it as yet another attempt to shift the blame.
Shrugging off the real problems as ‘Russian propaganda’ leaves many survivors outraged as they can see for themselves scores of real looters committing real crimes in the aftermath of the disaster. But the Cabinet ministers are only adding insult to injury. A lot of Poles have taken to social media to air their disapproval of the current policy as they believe the government is more concerned about the image-boosting PR stunts than it is about the relief effort. The emergency task force officials seem more focused on posting pictures of them posing in the flood-stricken areas. Meanwhile, President Andrzej Duda attended the traditional Presidential Harvest Festival, picked the best wreath and offered his gratitude to the rural women for keeping the longtime traditions alive. He also flew over to the US to endorse Donald Trump’s re-election bid.
But what the president failed to do was publicly address the flood and tell the national media about the upcoming government flood relief strategy. Some suggest that as Duda’s second – and final – term is winding down, he cannot be bothered to feign interest. The flood survivors compare the way the government has been treating them in recent weeks to their much more favourable and proactive stance on the Ukrainian refugees. A clip from a TV show has blown up on Polish social media, showing a woman from the affected area saying the flood survivors are being treated by their own government way worse than the struggling Ukrainians.
But the flood drama has also crossed into the comedic realm. On top of the Russian PsyOp saboteurs, the government has targeted Polish beavers as potential culprits too, at least, according to prime minister Donald Tusk, that is. He claims that the beavers nibbling away at the dams did have a role in the disaster. By the looks of it, the government is about to unleash a crusade against the semi-aquatic rodents. ‘Sometimes we have to choose between our love for animals and the security of our towns and villages as well as the dam maintenance,’ Tusk told the flood response task force.
The statement has sparked a raft of funny comments, but for the beavers, it will be no laughing matter. The animals are likely to be hunted down and chased away, so the once-famous beaver meme may take on a sombre undertone, after all.