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The story of the breaking of the vast dam near Tass on the Danube, some 40 miles south of Budapest, a few years ago, is told here by a young engineer, head of the local flood organization. The following passage is his first person account of the last hours before the catastrophe.

     From the window of the turbine house we looked out over the river. As far as the eye could reach, the Danube had overflowed its banks, and in the twilight the boundless expanse of water was a frightening sight. Ice floes caught in the eddies circled wildly, then floated on, skirting the poplars on Rose Island as they moved swiftly forward, to be tossed finally by the high waves against the wall of reinforced concrete and crushed to smithereens.

     At 3 p.m. our water-gauge was up to 812 centimetres and by 6 p.m. it had topped 857 centimetres and the level was rising constantly. At this very instant the discharge was at least 13,000 cubic metres a second, and the ice barrier above the bridge of Dunaföldvar seems to have hopelessly stopped the normal flow of water. In this sector, where we were stationed, the tremendous masses of water which the Inn river from the Alps and the other tributaries from the Carpathians shed into the Danube are ominously stowed.

     The mechanic was lounging around the generator that had been stopped, undecided what to do.

     “Are they going to blow up the railway bridge?” he asked.

     “There’s not much sense in that any more. The ice has blocked the bed of the river right down to the bottom”.

     Two army reconnaissance planes were circling above the water.

     The reports were anything but reassuring. At Dunaföldvar, the water level had risen about 2 metres since 9 a.m. to reach the highest mark ever. Now the water was trying to escape through the dead arm, near the left bank. Two piers of the railway bridge had greatly suffered under the terrific pressure.

     At 9 p.m. Budapest called again.

     “How is it with you?”.

     “The water’s still rising”.

     “That was to be expected”.

     “We need sandbags”.

     “2,000 are on their way”.

     “That’s no help”.

     “We have no more. We had to send 80,000 urgently to Dunavecse”.

     “Who’s going to fill 80,000 sandbags?”.

     “Besides the army detachment, there are 2,300 men at work there. We also sent 30 dumpers and two shovel dredgers”.

     Calls from the other stations came in less and less often. The fellows there seemed to be fully taken up with their own problems. With the danger so imminent everywhere, they apparently had no time and no inclination to report or ask for information.

     Janos Csapo stepped into the office. He was soaked to the skin and his boots were covered with thick, limy mud.

     “In the yard. Water’s surfacing everywhere in the yard”.

     “Whatever happens, we can rely on the concrete wall”. I tried to reassure him.

     “But what’s going on under the wall? In the subsoil?” To this I had no answer.

     “If we only knew where it’s going to strike”, he said.

     “Perhaps it won’t strike here after all”.

     “We’ve got only 250 sandbags left. Then there’s no more we can do”.

     “All the material in reserve is needed in Dunavecse”.

     “This sitting around doing nothing is worse than the heaviest work”, he answered and returned to the dike.

     A lieutenant from the engineer corps appeared. “In the morning, we’re going to bomb the ice piling up at the bridge”, he said in a complacent tone.

     Mihaly Stubar, who had been dozing at his desk, snapped: “What good are your 500 to 700 lb. bombs? It’s a question of moving millions of tons of ice”.

     “What else could we do?” asked the lieutenant in an uneasy voice.

     The thermometer showed 11°C below zero. A little later, Schmidt reported from the turbine house “941 cm,”

     I called Budapest. “The water level has risen 4 metres in 24 hours”.

     “You still are the safest point in the whole danger zone”, was the answer from engineer Marsalko.

     “The repeated surfacing of water along the banks is a baleful sign”.

     “For the moment, we can’t do anything for you. We’ve a 200 km front to protect, and our reserves are pretty much depleted”.

     Instantly, the phone rang again. I thought Marsalko had reconsidered the matter. But it was a very different piece of news: “Head surgeon Toth from the hospital in Kecskemet. Your wife asked me to get in touch with you”.

     This call struck me like lightning. For two days, I had not heard anything from her. Despite it all, I could have found ways and means to get news from her, at least to send her a message.

     My bad conscience weighed heavily upon me. ‘What’s happened, doctor?”.

     “Nothing has happened, that’s just it. We can’t wait any longer. We must do a Caesarean. Your wife begged me to let you know before the anesthesia”.

     “For God’s sake . . . . . how will she take it?”

     “I don’t like prophecies, my good fellow. Besides . . . . . your place now ought to be right here”.

     “You must understand . . . . .”

     He hung up.

     My head was buzzing. That evening, I felt pretty rotten and took too many antipyretics. At 11.30 p.m. somebody reported that the immediate evacuation of Dunapataj had been ordered.

     Of that night I also recall a soft, warm woman’s voice that came over the radio: “It is midnight. This is the news service”. If I remember rightly, she never mentioned the solid sheet of ice menacing the bridge at Dunaföldvar.

     Helplessly, we awaited the breaking of dawn in silence. At 2 a.m. Lencz came up from the lock.

     “1014 cm. Even in the yard, you’re up to your thighs in water”.

     No one would ever have dared predict that the water level could some day rise above the 10 meter mark.

     It was still pitch dark when I returned to the parapet. The water had a strange attraction for me that I could not resist. At the south of Rose Island the water was already skimming the lower branches of the trees. The floods were rolling along with terrifying speed and power. At the lock, I found Gergely Mucsi and three other construction labourers. They were hauling sandbags. The scene was ghastly lit by torches.

     The waves, foaming, billowing, roaring, broke on the other side of the wall, almost above my head. I pulled up my collar as I walked on.

     Nobody asked any questions when I returned to the office. The telephone remained silent, too. We waited. It was cold in the room, but not one of us took the trouble to put wood on the fire. Dawn was breaking when Csapo suddenly called out: “Look . . . water . . . here! Right under the window!”.

     He ran out to get an empty barrel. Normally, we used such vessels to collect minor quantities of oozing water.

     But we had no more barrels available.

     I looked at my watch. It was 6.12 a.m.

     Although the five nights without sleep had completely exhausted me, I was suddenly quite clear in the head. Without hesitating even a second I called Budapest.

     I request the immediate dispatch of the emergency squad. With this bunch of frozen men I can no longer take the responsibility for eight villages”.

     Engineer Marsalko reflected for a moment. It was no easy decision for him.

     “O.K.” he then said, “I’ll take the necessary measures at once

     Patkai came in.

     “The power supply’s been cut everywhere”.

     But this was no longer of any importance. The army had power units anyway.

     We all went out to inspect the barrage wall. Only Patkai remained at the telephone. Soldiers, labourers, volunteers, they all stopped their work on the crest of the dam for a minute or so and stared at us fixedly as if ours were the magic power to master the flood at the very last minute.

     The difference in level between the river itself and the side arms was now plus 3 metres compared with a normal state of minus 4 to 6 metres. The pressure bearing on the dam and on the turbine house was beyond imagination and the heavy wind was an added major factor.

     Along the foot of the wall, we crossed over to Rose Island. The water was piling up huge blocks of ice; it was whirling, gushing, roaring, barely one arm’s length away. On the bank, at the foot of the wall, we had the feeling that the cantilever arm of a gigantic crane was swaying with a weight of several thousand tons above our heads.

     And yet, our eyes were fixed on the ground. Everywhere, subsoil water was surging. The concrete wall was 20 cm thick and would no doubt stand the pressure, but several weeks ago there was an earthquake registered here . . . . .

     Similar thoughts were apparently on Janos Csapo’s mind.

     “That earthquake in February certainly did this dam no good”, he said.

     “Shut up”, I shouted at him. But he added:

     “It’d be good to know what’s going on in the subsoil”.

     “We shall know soon. Only too soon”.

     We could not continue our conversation because the emergency squad had arrived. We saw fresh, rested men jump from the lorries. They went to work at once, unloading tools, piles, steel-plates and a big ram-engine. They were welltrained and reassuring in their appearance.

     Engineer Wendt was in command. He approached us on the crest of the dam. “You’d better get some sleep”, he called out to me, “you hardly look like a human being”.

     He stood opposite me, in front of one of the pillars that supported the wall. I cast him an uncertain glance. My burning eyes afforded me but a dim impression of his silhouette that looked to me as if it were painted flat on the wall.

     Suddenly, I staggered. By chance I caught a glimpse of the pillar behind Wendt. What I saw there restored my faculties immediately. “The water!” I exclaimed, “the water!”.

     With my arm outstretched I pointed to one of the sections in the concrete wall. Close to the pillar, about at ankle height, water was trickling through the wall, slowly and hardly noticeable.

     Wendt reeled round like a shot. “A hair crack in the concrete! Hi, chaps   come here! Quick! Quick!”. Half of his men came running over to us. But it was too late.

     The pillar supporting the 4 metre concrete section cracked and gave way. The resulting crevice was barely a few centimeters wide, but it was enough for the water to gush forth on to the earth bank below.

     “Slabs! Come on!” Wendt shouted.

     His men hurried back to fetch the material needed to seal the breach.

     “We must try”, said the engineer with forced calm.

     We stood there a few seconds, glued to the spot, spellbound.

     “Give the flood alarm to all the villages along the arm of the Danube!”, I called out.

     Janos Lencz ran towards the office. He beckoned to the men of the signal corps who made for the wireless car.

     But the water was quicker. Before the men of the emergency squad with the slabs reached the site of the seemingly harmless crack, it had broken down the mighty section of reinforced concrete between the two pillars.

     The breach was now 4 metres wide and the waters were pouring down.

     “There’s no stopping it now”, said Csapo.

     Wendt could have murdered him with his eyes.

     But not even the deluging cataract could dishearten his men. With unrelenting energy they dragged the building material to the next pillar.

     Meanwhile, the water was hollowing out the soil beneath the steel slabs laid as supports on the ground. It was quite clear to us that, if another concrete section were overthrown, the water would wash away not only the building material and the tools but the men as well. And we all knew that there was no rescue from the icy waters.

     Yet, the water did not merely break down one, but two sections in one grand sweep. The gap was now 12 meters broad.

     We ran for dear life.

     On the other side, on the island, a man and a woman were standing on the sandy beach. They were waving to us in despair. Two men of the engineer corps set out immediately in a speedboat to their rescue.

     I felt a hand on my shoulder. Engineer Benczur was standing behind me. With him came an officer and Czervan, the technician sent over from Nyiregyhaza.

     “We couldn’t help it . . . believe me”, I whispered. My voice faded.

     Benczur was cursing.

     “I won’t accept defeat”, he said in an almost reprimanding tone, “we just have to continue the battle. The villages along the arm of the river must be saved at all cost”.

     The major whom I did not know was watching the seething waters. His face was glum.

     “The speed of the water is all of 4 to 5 metres per second”, he said; “by the afternoon the whole arm will be filled up”.

     We were constantly on the retreat because the water swept away one concrete section after the other.

     “If the dam had broken near Dunaföldvar, the water would have flooded the lowland all the way to Baja”, Czervan remarked.

     “Quite so”, Benczur retorted in a very sarcastic tone.

     Janos Lencz came running from the office.

     “The turbine house!” he shouted from afar, “the water’s washing away the ground . . . . . to the rear also!”

     We all turned on the spot; he had not exaggerated. The water was eating away the solid body of the dam with dreadful speed, devouring about a metre per minute.

     I had read quite a lot about the spring floods which often completely destroy the natural order of things along the coasts of Central America. And I had always believed the reports to be greatly overdone. But what I saw now with my own eyes was more fantastic than the most coloured descriptions.

     The breach in the barrage was now 100 metres broad. Transversally, destruction had ceased since the water found space enough to flow unhindered into the side arm.

     We had to retreat to the bank. From there we watched how the erosion reached the row of trees.

     The first victim was a mighty poplar. The flood closed in on it, ate away in a second the solid soil under its roots, swirled the tree around its longitudinal axis and swept it off in the direction of the breach.

     But the eddy took hold of the tree with such force that it did not fall. It swam bolt-upright!

     There followed a smaller plane tree and other poplars. They passed in single file, like a row of soldiers, to dip only much further down the dead arm where the waters had room to expand.

     The next victim was a steel-structure pylon of the high tension line. Such pylons are normally grounded on a concrete base of several tons.

     The terrific whirl knocked it over just as easily as the trees. It encircled the pylon, hollowed out the soil in but a few seconds and flung it up in the air as if it were a feather weight. The pylon of steel and concrete floated towards the arm of the river, like the radar antenna of an invidible submarine.

     “If this continues, Rose Island will go down with every soul”, Benczur murmured, “even the natives won’t recognize these surroundings”.

     “The turbine house must be saved under all circumstances”, said the major.

     “But how?”.

     “We must blow up the circular dike. That will stop the erosion and take the pressure off the turbine house”.

     “But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Csapo.

     “What do you want to do? Look on, with your hands folded?”.

     “If we destroy the dike, the river arm will fill up in only half the time. The population won’t have enough time to get away”.

     “Who after all should blast the dike?”, Benczur asked.

     “I’ll call the defense ministry. The blasting squad can be ordered here immediately”.

     “They couldn’t be here before midday. And how are the men with their heavy equipment to reach the island?”.

     “That’s not the point,” l interrupted the discussion, “we can’t jeopardise the life of tens of thousands just because of the turbine house”.

     “It was a hydraulic fracture in the ground, major”, Benczur said, “in such a case we are helpless”.

     The major murmured something to himself, but nobody paid any more attention to him.

     There is only little I remember of the hours that followed. I did see how the water tossed up another high-tension pylon, base and all, and carried it some 500 metres to where it crashed into the trees. I remember how the graceful wooden arched bridge which linked the two small islands was swept away like a match and shattered. I recall seeing Gergely Mucsi rowing across to Rose Island in a tiny little boat, dancing like a nutshell on the billowing waves. He dared his life purely to rescue Drilling, the woefully howling dog of the dikereeve. I also remember Janos Lencz as he stumbled over a stone near the bank and fell into the water. Luckily, a soldier near to him had the presence of mind to throw out a rope and thus save him from certain death.

     Then reality became confused with feverish visions. I saw my wife with our first child whose birth had kept us in suspense for weeks. She was taking the sturdy little fellow to the clinic in a white pram. I saw her there conversing with other young mothers, all waiting for their babies to be vaccinated; I saw Mihaly Szokolai who, become a fairy giant, broke the enormous icebergs to pieces merely with his hands. I saw peasants frozen to death, seeking refuge from the icy waters in the trees, and then I saw the same people in the bright spring sunshine, sowing seed on the fields where the waters had receded, their terror and agony forgotten. I saw the fair landscape under a light blue sky, the Danube, become docile, with snow-white pleasure boats and hundreds of brown double scullers, with thousands of gay city folk out for the day. I witnessed the last breath of my deceased father and heard the birds sing in Makad forest where, when we were engaged, Erzsi and I used to stroll around and admire the florious sunsets over the river.

     Then, exhaustion got the better of me. Sleep was all I wished for . . . . . sleep . . .  . . come what may.

     But reality claimed its right once more.

     The raging vortex had already devoured half the island. There was nothing more to see of the trees, the high-tension lines, nothing left of the proud barrage and the storage buildings. Only the turbine still withstood the furious waters.

     Slowly, moving in a circle, the flood tightened its deadly embrace. First, giving way to a momentary whim, the water flung aside the barbed wire fence. This was a matter of seconds.

     In time, there disappeared also the strip of land, just a few metres broad, that still protected the base of the structure. It melted away so quietly and softly like the sand in an hour glass. The eastern wall of the turbine house was deprived of its support.

     It appeared then as if the water paused for a short while, as if to gauge its next task. The turbine house seemed more difficult to deal with than the trees and the pylons.

     But we all knew only too well what was going on in these brief minutes. Below, in a depth of 16 metres, the water was hollowing out the massive base of the two-storey concrete building.

     During this cruel interlude, Endre Patkai was standing next to me. His eyes were popping out of his head. I shall never forget his expression. Only a woman’s face, at the approach of death, betrays such paralyzing terror as I saw here.

     We became the horrified onlookers at a scene so formidable that no one ever witnessed it before.

     As if the Cyclops were playing with a dice, the turbine house toppled over and stood on one edge. It did not collapse. The framework and the walls remained intact. It simply tilted to an angle of about 35°. Not a single window was broken, not a single tile fell from its roof.

     Since it remained in one piece, I first thought, it might some day perhaps be restored by some unbelievably powerful hoist to its original position. Then, its machines would start operating again to generate power as if nothing had happened.

     All that was necessary was some supernatural force. Nothing else.

     The wind was cold and blew the snow into my face.

     And the water, having vanquished the last obstacle impeding its course, carried off its bounty of thick tree trunks, massive concrete boulders, mighty drifts of ice, together with an old fishing smack and the sad remains of a covered wagon, to continue in racing speed, unrelenting, victorious to the north.

     From the village came the soft ringing of the midday bells.

     I cast one last glance at the upper end of Rose Island that nothing could now save from its doom — then everything turned black before my eyes.