Flood 2024 year later. Attachment to homeland stronger than fear

New roofs and freshly laid plaster shine on some houses, while others still stand with their facades half scraped off. A year after the 2024 flood in the Klodzko Valley, these contrasts are striking. Polish Humanitarian Action has reached nearly 30,000 people with aid, but for many families, everyday life is still a struggle with the effects of the disaster. Agnieszka Hobot talks to Katarzyna Pietrzak of PAH about the scale of support, difficult decisions made on the ground and the strength of local communities.

Agnieszka Hobot: The report opens with statistics: thousands of people assisted, hundreds of buildings repaired. This gives a picture of the scale, but does not reflect what people experienced. Which of the stories of the families you met best captures the experience of that flood?

Katherine Pietrzak: These were very different people, because the scale of the need was enormous. That’s why as many as nine assistance programs – construction and social programs – were launched. From the very beginning it was clear that it was impossible to limit ourselves to one form of support. Very many aspects had to be taken care of simultaneously.

However, there are stories that are particularly memorable to me. One of them concerns children. I remember a contest held at school on the occasion of November 11 – every year children prepared works about national heroes. They usually featured flags, patriotic symbols, smiling figures. This time, however, 90 percent of the works depicted flooding. Children drew black water, people sitting on rooftops, faces full of terror and screaming. The national heroes in these drawings were the firefighters and all those who rescued and evacuated residents. It was a very powerful testimony, especially since it was about several-year-old children. These works showed how much of a mark the flood had left on them. It was then that the idea of launching a psychosocial assistance program in schools was born. At first we focused on food support, but the children’s drawings made us realize that this trauma needed immediate attention.

The second story, or rather, the thing that particularly stuck in my mind, are the visits to homes in the Klodzko Basin. This is a region of Poland where a great many elderly, lonely people live. When we visited people in their homes in February – that is, six months after the flood – we still saw apartments flooded to the ceiling, stripped to the bare walls, with plaster falling off. We met people who still hadn’t returned to their homes and were living in foster centers or trying to live in these destroyed interiors. They burned whatever they could – even wet wood – to dry the walls and begin repairs.

This helplessness was shocking. Many of these people were over 60 years old, and were often single women. Houses were heated with coal, and in almost every other one there were diseases resulting from dampness and mold. The situation was quite different from the families of younger people, where one could count on two salaries and concerted effort. For older, single people living on a small pension or annuity, the prospect of rebuilding a house was overwhelming.

To this day I still remember the sight – the smell of flooded houses, the image of people who, despite the months that passed, were still fighting the elements and their effects. It’s something that really stays in the mind forever.

A.H.: Such a picture is frightening. Someone who has never encountered the effects of the floods may not realize that it’s not just a matter of water passing through. The scale of needs after the floods was enormous – from pumps and cleaning supplies to help with home repairs and psychological support. How did you set priorities and decide which activities should be implemented first?

K.P.: That’s always the basis of wise assistance – that the response should be adequate to the real needs. I was on the first team to reach the flooded areas on September 16. Even then we knew that the scale of the challenge would be enormous and that it was impossible to help effectively remotely. Therefore, the decision was immediately made to open a field office in Klodzko. Only by being on the ground, among the people, could we really understand what they needed and in what order.

The first step, of course, was basic purchases – dehumidification equipment, tools. But very quickly it became clear that it was impossible to limit oneself to mere reconstruction. Families asked: OK, we have hammers, we can forge plaster, but what to do with the children? We can’t carry out the renovation under such conditions . Institutions – schools, day care centers – were flooded and could not accommodate children. That’s why the idea of organizing respite camps and supporting community centers or day care centers immediately arose, so that they could operate and organize activities as soon as possible. This was crucial – the children had care and meals, and the parents could get on with rebuilding their homes.

From this came the next steps. Institutions, in order to perform their functions, needed money, and in municipalities where 80 percent of the infrastructure had been destroyed, rebuilding a library or community center was not a priority in the budget. Therefore, we launched grants that allowed institutions to return to work as soon as possible.

The same was true of the volunteer fire departments. Everyone knew how great a role they played during the floods, and firefighters lost equipment. So it was natural to support the TSO units so that they could continue their role.

The next step was to help the elderly and lonely. Some of them did not benefit from other forms of support – winter came, they had limited access to institutions, and they are often digitally and communicatively excluded. We knew it was necessary to create a solution specifically for them. That’s why we launched a cash support program – our employees and volunteers visited such people in their homes, collected data, and the funds were transferred to them directly, without clearing invoices. This is important, because many expenses – such as medicines or basic household items – could not be documented in traditional billing systems.

All this flexibility came from being on the ground, from listening to people and responding to their real needs. That’s why the decision to open a field office in Klodzko was absolutely crucial – without it, we wouldn’t have been able to operate effectively.

A.H.: You mentioned that you visited residents directly in their homes. Were there times when people showed distrust of the assistance you offered? How did you react in such situations?

K.P.: Yes, such situations have happened, especially with the cash support program. It was different when the assistance went to institutions – they are used to submitting applications, settlements and formal procedures. On the other hand, when it came to the elderly, natural distrust was high. This was due to experience – many of them had previously heard of cases of scams, of vendors who promised free stoves, for example, if someone made a down payment. So the elderly had every right to approach any new initiative with caution.

That’s why whenever we entered a new municipality – and we worked in five – we started with official contact with the local authorities. We met with the mayor or village head, informed the police and village heads. We attended village meetings, where we showed our badges, vests and marked cars. This gave residents confidence that we were credible.

Nevertheless, it happened that elderly people asked to see an ID card or called the headquarters in Warsaw, asking if we were really operating in their locality. That’s why we ourselves took care to keep in touch with the headquarters – we passed on information about which localities we were working in on a given day, so that we could immediately confirm our credibility. Over time, as the first people on the list received real support, distrust diminished.

There was also a certain challenge in the fact that in the program we cooperated with the Union of Ukrainians in Przemyśl. There were always two people on the team – a PAH representative and a representative of the Union – and at first there were times when the Ukrainian accent raised additional questions and concerns.

This caution was natural and fully justified, and we treated the time spent building trust as an investment. Cooperation with mayors, village heads, directors of social welfare centers really paid off. People were able to verify our actions, and local institutions knew us. This showed that good planning and patience are key when working on the ground.

A.H.: I would like to return to the theme of children. The flood is an experience of entire families, but it seems to me that it is the youngest ones who are most strongly affected. You mentioned the drawings that reflected their experiences. How do you think actions should be taken after such events – is it more important to get children back to school and activities quickly, or is it more important to provide psychological support? Or should these actions go hand in hand?

K.P.: In order to best help children, it has to go hand in hand. Psychological or psychosocial assistance requires conditions, but it’s also important to remember that basic needs, like a full belly or a sense of security, are equally important. This is always the biggest challenge in natural disasters: assistance must be very broad and cover different areas simultaneously.

We often think that children don’t understand the situation or are quicker to get used to it than adults. Meanwhile, the drawings prepared a month and a half after the floods showed how deep it is in them. That’s why actions must be parallel – rebuilding the house, returning to school and quickly starting psychosocial programs.

I remember that in the very first week of work in the Opole region, in cooperation with our partners, we were able to organize mobile psychosocial support teams. At first we heard that people were too busy cleaning to focus on their well-being. However, it turned out that the need to talk was great – and not only among children, but also among adults. Already in the second week, residents had such a great need to chatter that they simply let us into their homes and talked for hours about their experiences. Especially the elderly, who were very connected to the objects and the place, wanted to share stories: here I had a beehive, there I lost a workshop, tools I had collected for years. This showed that psychosocial support is as necessary for children as for adults.

A.H.: And what is the situation like one year after the flood? What is most striking today – the sight of new roofs and renovated houses, or rather the traces of water and buildings that are still waiting to be repaired?

K.P.: This discrepancy is striking. Driving, for example, along the road from Klodzko to Ladek-Zdroj, we see houses that have been completely renovated, and next to those where the plaster is still cut off halfway up the windows. There are various reasons for this: some are waiting for drying, others for free contractors, still others for administrative decisions, e.g. from the Polish Waters, whether they can return home.

This difference between houses that have been renovated and those that are still waiting for renovation is perhaps most apparent today. In one village you can see freshly repainted facades, new roofs and well-kept yards, while right next door – buildings with dampness on the walls and interiors waiting for the next stage of work. This contrast best reflects the pace of reconstruction and the capabilities of individual families: some have managed faster, others have stopped halfway, waiting for official decisions or contractors.

But alongside these physical traces of the flood, another dimension is becoming increasingly clear – the need to prepare people for the future. In conversations with residents, the question of what to do in the first hours after the elements, how to react and how to organize so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past, often recurs. This shows that reconstruction cannot end with walls and roofs – it must also include training and education that will give a sense of security and agility in the face of another flood.

A.H.: Have you met people who said: I don’t want to live here anymore, I don’t want to experience it again, I’m moving out?

K.P.: Personally, I have not encountered such statements, although I know that individuals – mainly younger people – have decided to leave. On the other hand, among older residents, attachment to the land, to the fatherland, was prevalent. Many of them survived the 1997 flood and two later ones, and even though the current one was the fourth in a row, they still say: this is my place, I won’t go anywhere.

Of course, there were also ambivalent voices. One gentleman even said that if the flood had wiped out his house completely, he would have gone to a block of flats and had peace of mind, and so, despite the destruction, he can’t sell his fatherland. On the other hand, some people viewed the reconstruction funds as an opportunity to improve their living conditions, such as replacing their heating with more comfortable ones.

One should also keep in mind the purely economic dimension. Selling a house in a floodplain does not provide the means to buy an apartment in a larger city, such as Wroclaw. This is a real barrier – even if someone would like to move away, most often it is not possible. Therefore, decisions to leave their hometowns were rare.

It was far more common to see an attachment to place and to one’s homeland, and a determination to rebuild once again, despite the knowledge that the risk of the floods returning is constant. This shows the tremendous strength of local communities that, even in the face of great losses, refuse to give up their place on earth.