Lithuanian farmers battle rush of early floods

KLAIPEDA - When the rising floodwater prevented 78-year-old Ruta Girulyte from lighting her wood stove, she slogged up to her cattle shed and warmed her feet in a pile of cow manure.

Like many living on farms along Lithuania's western coast, Girulyte has chosen to stay with her cows and chickens rather than be evacuated from what many here say is the worst flooding they have ever seen.

"You'll take me out of here only in a coffin," she said.

Unseasonably warm temperatures have already melted this winter's heavy snowfall, bloating rivers and flooding 23,000 hectares of lowland farms.

Water is flooding into homes and leaving hundreds without heat and electricity.

Flooding occurs in the 19 villages near here every year, normally in the spring, as a combination of melting snow and rising tides raise water levels.

But this year the floods have come unusually early, beginning in late January when the Minija River overflowed and continuing through this week.

Farmers are ferrying food and supplies to each other by boat.

Motorists have been stranded on flooded roadways. Petras Juodikaitis of Liaunai said his car sank in floodwater on his farm and part of his cattle shed collapsed.

About 1,000 people live in the heart of the floods.

Several people have been evacuated from flooded farms in the village of Rugaliai. Televisions, furniture and refrigerators floated outside farms in the village. Their cattle have been moved to higher ground.

Rugaliai resident Zigmas Lusinskas has had to transport milk from his 30 cows by boat to a truck waiting on higher ground. He said many of his neighbors, who have been unable to get their milk off the farm, had simply fed it to their animals.

Local authorities have distributed rubber boots and overalls to residents. But residents say they need help getting basic things like clean water.

Residents say the national government is doing little to help. Army troops are helping transport locals, but residents say it's too little too late.

Residents blame their plight on badly maintained embankments.

There are about 70 kilometers of embankments along the rivers, but residents say only about half a kilometer a year is being improved.

They expect the flooding to get worse.

Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, who recently visited the area, suggested it might be easier to move people out of the flood zone permanently rather than help them every year.