Danube River Water Levels
I read an article in Sunday's (8/9/26) Boston Globe with a date line of Belgrade, Serbia. The headline is "Drying Danube reveals Nazi-era vessels, and the hazards of heat"
While the article spoke about the river being three feet below normal which led to difficult navigation, it presented some history which makes navigation more difficult.
At the end of WWII, the Germans scuttled over 200 ships in the Iron Gate section between Romania and Serbia to prevent the approaching Russians from coming upriver to Hungary and Austria. Besides the type of ships that you would anticipate, they included submarines.
With the low water levels this year more scuttled ships are emerging than in earlier years. This makes navigation more difficult adding in a concern that some of the ships could still have live ordinance.
Serbia wants to remove these ships but it is a time consuming and expensive problem costing over 20 million euros to remove one ship! So far they have only removed one ship.
When speaking with the captains responsible for commercial traffic, they expressed concern that this may not be resolved over the winter. Either a lot of rain or a good snow pack will be needed.
Comments
Thanks, Kathy M. I had reported on the exposed Nazi ships in a different thread, but your information is far more comprehensive.
This drought goes far beyond the inconvenience of canceled/interrupted river travel. It is affecting cargo movement, water not being available for power plants, loss of revenue for businesses who rely on river tourism, decimated fisheries, on and on. The repercussions will keep multiplying if things don’t change soon. Tragic.
The article also said that the temperatures in Belgrade are running between 95 and 100F.
Photos of the Danube and Rhine in today's Washington Post were amazing and depressing!!