We wrote about residents’ reaction to the mayor’s actions in the article: Bolesławiec residents furious with Mayor Roman after the flood. A wave of criticism flooded the official profile of Mayor Piotr Roman and the City of Bolesławiec profile beneath a post in which the mayor reported that the swimming pools on Spacerowa Street had “withstood” the flood.
From the information provided by the mayor at the county council session on September 19, it can be inferred that he tried to blame the contractor, ALSTAL Grupa Budowlana, for failing to secure the pools. He said the city had been informed that the contractor had secured the new pools, but it turned out that this had not been done after all. We wrote about this in the article: Councillor’s accusation: The city mainly protected its own property. Piotr Roman reacts sharply.
We asked spokesperson Agnieszka Gergont about two simple matters.
This was the content of our question:
Good morning, I am writing to kindly request official information on how the swimming pools on Spacerowa Street were secured during the flood. Did this take place at the expense of protecting residential buildings? In particular, I would ask you to address the allegations of witnesses who claim that “The guys at ZEC filled almost 2,000 sandbags for free in 16 hours, convinced that they were helping save people’s homes, and now it turns out that the swimming pools, which had not even been built yet, were supposed to be surrounded with those bags”.
I would also like to ask whether the mayor will waive parking fees for people affected by the flood.
We did not receive a response, but during the September City Council session the mayor nevertheless addressed the question about the pools from our email.
– ZEC was filling sandbags, and here again comes this attempt to present the matter as an alternative: were we saving the pools instead of saving people? – said Piotr Roman. – Ladies and gentlemen, ZEC filled 1,100 sandbags and delivered them. Of these, 500 went to the pools, meaning that they also served to protect the embankments, because the bags were used mainly on the embankments, as well as on the wall built on the Spacerowa Street side. The remaining 600, more than 600 sandbags went elsewhere. We did not do this at the expense of saving other areas; we did it simultaneously. What is more, only after we had established that people were working in other places and that sandbags had reached them did we begin work on the pools. We would not have been able to rebuild those pools if they had been flooded. There would have been no chance of recovering the PLN 100 million we received from the Polish Deal. There will be no such money again. Several dozen million zlotys have been invested there – the mayor concluded.
Paweł Dul, director of MOSiR, described the defense of the new pools.
– We knew that our pools were safe because this is not a flood-prone area. We were piling up sandbags intended to protect our infrastructure – Paweł Dul informed the councillors. – We secured the entire infrastructure, worth nearly PLN 60 million, on Sunday. Our employees, neighbors from Spacerowa Street who helped, volunteers, and the company that was carrying out the façade work all showed up on Sunday, and we piled up sandbags intended to protect our infrastructure. At night, the residents of Spacerowa Street asked me for sandbags. We and they were united. Monday came. Our infrastructure had been secured. And here is the important point: we began defending the embankments. We were not defending the pools, but the flood embankments, because if they had been breached, Spacerowa Street and Zabobrze would have been flooded. I do not know what would have happened to our pools. Our efforts focused on monitoring the pedestrian bridge. What was happening there from Monday morning… I spoke with the mayor. The mayor asked what was making all that cracking noise. It was trees. The trees were cracking like matchsticks. They were getting caught on the bridge spans; there were so many branches on the bridge that it was impossible to cross… At that moment the fire service arrived; what they did deserves enormous respect and admiration. I will not talk about certain things because I probably should not. But when the saw used to cut down a tree pressing against our pedestrian bridge is submerged, it is horrifying; it cannot be described. These are incredibly brave people, although for a second I thought they were crazy—but no, it was courage – the director added. When the situation became difficult, Piotr Roman contacted the director. – The mayor called me and asked me to evacuate everyone who was on our premises. He said that human life was the most important thing. And it is very important that the mayor cares about all these people – the director concluded his emotional account of defending the pools, embankments, pedestrian bridge, Spacerowa Street and Zabobrze.