Towns Evacuated In Hungary As Red Sludge Fears Grow

Towns Evacuated In Hungary As Red Sludge Fears Grow

news.sky.com

Residents of two Hungarian towns are being evacuated after prime minister Viktor Orban warned the weakened wall of the red sludge reservoir is likely to collapse.

Around 800 residents were moved from the town of Kolontar just before dawn and more than 5,000 are being evacuated from Devecser over fears that another spill could be imminent.

Mr Orban told reporters about the new developments and promised the "toughest possible" consequences for those responsible for the disaster.

"Behind this tragedy human errors and mistakes must exist," he said. "We are going to reveal all of that

(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm surprised this story isnt one to be on the first page here.... it's a pretty bad one and looks like things could get worse....

At least the Authorities are saying they will be all out to find who is responsible.

There is a video to watch on the skynews website but i can't embed it here although i've got more story:

Towns Evacuated As Red Sludge Fears Grow
Share Share Comments (4)11:04am UK, Saturday October 09, 2010

Sarah Gordon, Sky News Online

Residents of two Hungarian towns are being evacuated after prime minister Viktor Orban warned the weakened wall of the red sludge reservoir is likely to collapse.
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Around 800 residents were moved from the town of Kolontar just before dawn and more than 5,000 are being evacuated from Devecser over fears that another spill could be imminent.

Mr Orban told reporters about the new developments and promised the "toughest possible" consequences for those responsible for the disaster.

"Behind this tragedy human errors and mistakes must exist," he said. "We are going to reveal all of that."

At least seven people died and more than 120 were injured when the walls of a reservoir at an alumina plant gave way on Monday flooding several towns in western Hungary with 184 million gallons of toxic waste


^^ That's more Toxic waste spewinto our system!!

news.sky.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by TruthxIsxInxThexMist


The reason this is not a top-story on ATS, is because it happens outside the US and therefore, isn't considered important enough by the majority of (American) members.

Ontopic: We can only hope for the best. As soon as the soil dries and the wind starts to pick up, there is a very serious risk for many, many people. The 'red mud' contains a high concentration of heavy metals and its obvious what happens if people inhale them. I also hope that they are able to prevent the mud from flowing into the Danube any further...

reply to post by Mdv2


that seems to be the opinion of us here in North America

It's not that we don't care, these events are just not "highly" reported here. I seen a short clip of this on the TV yesterday but other than that I wouldn't have even known it happened. However I don't spend all day watching TV.

It is tragic, just because we are not informed does not mean we don't have compassion...
and I’m sure when and if the time comes that it be needed we will come to your aid at our cost
....**if it’s to our benefit of course**sarcasm

also I’d like to add, you have to keep in mind where the larger population of the ATS'ers are located. If the majority population is American then of course this news will not be MAJOR news here. Again yes it is shocking, tragic, and under reported.
Please inform us to what is really happing so we can understand the impact of this disaster


GummB

Let me be the first to S&F you brother. If that happens in USA, you'll have 50 flags at least. So sad, such a beautiful country facing that situation.

reply to post by TruthxIsxInxThexMist


Im as surprised as you are... it's been all over the news here since the leak started last monday. Seven deaths so far, lot's of burn victims and a lot of missing people...
Officials are saying they fear new floods in the area which will only make this worse. The residents of the evacuated town can't return there for years because of the toxins. If the mud dries, the toxins will spread through the air, but a lot of it is already in the soil which will have longterm effects on a huge area.
They say the damage to the Donau river is minimum, except for some death fish... but again, no one knows the long term effects... not to mention all the coutries the Donau flows through.

Please share more information about this disaster. As i read from newspaper, this is worse disaster than oil spill. Only little less amounts of this red sludge was spilled than in Gulf oil spill. In gulf we had oil spill, but this red sludge is full of toxic metals and is far worse than oil.

And yes i agree, this story should be on TOP. We are talking about tens of millions human made toxic waste spill.

I cant stand it when people bitch and moan about not enough flags or not the top story. Just give it rest. From what I can see this story has been on ATS for a grand total of an hour. In the US right now it is 8:10am Eastern standard time. 7:10am Central time (where I am) and 5:10am on the West Coast. Can we be allowed to wake up before we reply to a story or should we just never sleep so we can keep up with all the news and reply fast enough for you?

On topic.. I am not seeing any conspiracy here... just one big accident. It is easily a huge environmental catastrophe. I am almost shocked I have not heard a word of this on CNN yet, but then again it is not Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan drama.

reply to post by MrWendal


Dude, this story broke days ago

Reply to post by TruthxIsxInxThexMist

You know what? This really angers me. How many more of these disasters are we going to have? They are NOT going to wane. This is bloody outrageous. They are just going to keep on coming and coming...until one day when we won't be able to survive all this. The effects are just piling on each other until...BOOM!


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

The waste from the Bayer aluminum process is called "red mud" and its components are mainly iron, titanium, silica, and sodium plus trace elements that were in the Bauxite ore. See, for example, www.azom.com...

The problem is that this residiuum is highly basic as a result of the use of sodium hydroxide to dissolve the alumina in the Bauxite. This is the dangerous aspect. Treatment of this material is problematic; one solution has been described in the reference, above. The use of settling and evaporation ponds is what led to this disaster when rains caused collapse of the dam holding the sludge.

What will happen? The pH will be reduced by absorption of carbon dioxide from the air and reaction with naturally occurring acids. The iron, titanium, and silica content of the soil will increase. The sodium content will also go up but further rains could decrease it. The article scare tactics mentioning cyanide are just scare tactics; cyanide is not used in the Bayer aluminum process. Other metals present are trace. You would be surprised to find out what is present in your garden at low concentrations. There is a little bit of everything in everything else.

Originally posted by BlackPoison94
Reply to post by TruthxIsxInxThexMist

 

You know what? This really angers me. How many more of these disasters are we going to have? They are NOT going to wane. This is bloody outrageous. They are just going to keep on coming and coming...until one day when we won't be able to survive all this. The effects are just piling on each other until...BOOM!

I suspect my friend, that there will be many more disasters to come. They will continue to come until we realise that we are all one species and must work together to clean up all of our past messes. This is just the beginning. Wait till the chaos ensues from discovering that our financial structures are incapable of handling the amount of work necessary to fix it all.

Good times are coming. Suspicion, not prediction.

With Love,

Your Brother

reply to post by pteridine


I heard on one UK report that the authorities were finding surprisingly high (and dangerous) levels of mercury and arsenic in the contaminants. They were also saying (yesterday) that, aside from the imminent further collapse and release, the prime concern was the transition to air-born hazards if/as the weather changes from wet to dry, and the residue, which is clearly spread over a massive area and on all sorts of vegetation and so on, gets blown up by the wind...

Originally posted by MrWendal
I cant stand it when people bitch and moan about not enough flags or not the top story. Just give it rest. From what I can see this story has been on ATS for a grand total of an hour. In the US right now it is 8:10am Eastern standard time. 7:10am Central time (where I am) and 5:10am on the West Coast. Can we be allowed to wake up before we reply to a story or should we just never sleep so we can keep up with all the news and reply fast enough for you?

On topic.. I am not seeing any conspiracy here... just one big accident. It is easily a huge environmental catastrophe. I am almost shocked I have not heard a word of this on CNN yet, but then again it is not Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan drama.

I'm not bitching about it : )

I just felt it would have been mentioned on the ATS News #Forums as it has been in the News since Monday when the Dam burst and al this sludge came down on the people.... I mean there was tons of threads about the 'Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill' and not one on this disaster on the front page!!

And to what others have said 'we have so much toxic waste' here on Earth it's kinda incredible that we all don't have big problems with our health due to bad drinking water, washing water, food etc etc...

I also heard that 2 ships collided yesterday while at sea carrying tons of Oil on board but luckily according to reports, there hasn't been any spillage......

We have been following this for three days on the following thread;

Chemical Spill

There is no need to have two threads on this, and it realy should have been ,ade in the Fragile Earth forum like the existing one was.

In regards to what people have been saying wrt to not getting attention as it is in Europe and not the USA, we were discussing this on the following thread:

Europe Terror Plot

And it is true, that is exactly the reason, the media dosn't cover european matters as much in the USA.

This is so sad. This poor lady. I hope the "second wave" doesn't come.

"My husband and I want to stay until the very last moment and even then I'm not sure we'll leave," said the 79-year-old homemaker. "If another wave comes, I was thinking of standing on top of the kitchen table. Maybe the sludge won't go that high"

Gyori said she was exhausted and had been called by her son's family to join them at their home in Lake Balaton, 55 kilometers east of Devecser.

"I'm so tired and nervous, my mind isn't clicking like it usually does," said Gyori, a lifetime Devecser resident. "Of course I'm scared but abandoning our home will happen only as a final resort."

Source: aol.com

Originally posted by Mdv2
The reason this is not a top-story on ATS, is because it happens outside the US and therefore, isn't considered important enough by the majority of (American) members.

Don't put all of us Americans in the same boat. I've kept up with this story since it broke, despite the media in this country not dedicating much mention to it.

Hopefully they can get this mess cleaned up. It's a real shame when innocent people die because of corporate and governmental incompetence and recklessness. If even half the money that is put into weapons worldwide was put into infrastructure safeguards to protect the people, incidents like this would be much fewer and further between.

Those of you who believe in man-made global warming and support putting the blame on and taxing we the people for it, stories like this and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico expose your flawed stance. If you want to blame someone and tax someone, look no further than the corporations and governments who cause disasters like this.

Originally posted by pteridine
The waste from the Bayer aluminum process is called "red mud" and its components are mainly iron, titanium, silica, and sodium plus trace elements that were in the Bauxite ore. See, for example, www.azom.com...

The problem is that this residiuum is highly basic as a result of the use of sodium hydroxide to dissolve the alumina in the Bauxite. This is the dangerous aspect. Treatment of this material is problematic; one solution has been described in the reference, above. The use of settling and evaporation ponds is what led to this disaster when rains caused collapse of the dam holding the sludge.

What will happen? The pH will be reduced by absorption of carbon dioxide from the air and reaction with naturally occurring acids. The iron, titanium, and silica content of the soil will increase. The sodium content will also go up but further rains could decrease it. The article scare tactics mentioning cyanide are just scare tactics; cyanide is not used in the Bayer aluminum process. Other metals present are trace. You would be surprised to find out what is present in your garden at low concentrations. There is a little bit of everything in everything else.

edit on 10/9/2010 by pteridine because: corrected copy

From what you say there will grow flowers forever. Is it on purpose, and why you tell this info on this way stays question, i wont argue that, you can be payed to say what you say.

The thing is that red waste is very toxic and dangerous. In it they found more than double amounts of arsen(on average that type of waste). They found extreme amounts of mercury and others cant remember atm.

Newspapers say it is 150 to 180 million gallons of toxic waste. That is almost like gulf oil spill, but hey, we have chemicals here, not nature oil. All life in water where is red sludge is dead.

Originally posted by PETROLCOIN

Originally posted by Mdv2
The reason this is not a top-story on ATS, is because it happens outside the US and therefore, isn't considered important enough by the majority of (American) members.

Don't put all of us Americans in the same boat. I've kept up with this story since it broke, despite the media in this country not dedicating much mention to it.

I apologize for being to premature in my opinion. I guess if the MSM wouldn't have paid much attention to it in my country, I probably wouldn't realize how bad the situation is, either.