Twenty Years Since Biggest Calamity in Tatras Commemorated on Tuesday

Vysoke Tatry, November 19 (TASR) - The 20th anniversary of the biggest calamity in the history of the Tatra National Park (TANAP) was commemorated at a monument situated in the centre of the town of Vysoke Tatry (Presov region) on Tuesday. Vysoke Tatry mayor Jozef Stefanak and his predecessor Jan Mokos agreed that the death of a car driver who was hit by a falling tree will remain in their memories forever. "The damage, especially to nature, was incalculable. Donors and the state contributed some 95 million then Slovak crowns to us, with the Czech capital of Prague contributing the most - 10 million Czech crowns. However, the fact that that one person perished will remain in our memory forever. It was a needless death, he was returning to pick up his wife from work and he had the bad luck that a tree fall on him," stated Mokos. The monument was built in Novy Smokovec one year after the windstorm to commemorate the event. Its motto is: "not the action of nature, but the inaction of people is a disaster". Its dominant feature is a metal tree in the middle and granite slabs featuring the names of the donors, as well as the only victim, Miroslav Hromada. "The natural disaster is etched in our memory, it was a terrible sight with the trees falling down like matches," stated Stefanak. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, he was particularly surprised by the cohesion of people who united their forces, helped and were engaged in fundraising. An exhibition of photographs of the calamity by Mikulas Jacecko called "Twenty Years After" was opened in the Novy Smokovec spa on the occasion of the anniversary of the devastating windstorm. A professional conference on post-calamity research in the High Tatras was also held on Tuesday in premises of the TANAP Museum. The windstorm that hit the Tatras on November 19, 2004 was ranked among the ten most destructive European wind disasters of the past 30 years. It destroyed more than 12,000 hectares of forest in the TANAP alone. ko/mcs