Hungary builds dam as new toxic flood fears rise

AJKA, Hungary — Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers rushed to build a new dam near a chemical plant in western Hungary Sunday amid fears of a new flood of toxic red sludge that forced 1,000 villagers to evacuate their homes.Repair work also continued on the existing reservoir at an alumina plant where cracks in a wall raised fears of another spill after one on October 4 killed seven people, with one still missing, and wounded about 150 in Hungary's worst environmental disaster."The cracks earlier noticed did not widen over Saturday, and their repair is in progress," disaster relief chief Tibor Dobson said."At the same time we are building the new dam that will protect Kolontar. The foundation work has been finished. On Sunday our major task is going to be to widen the new dyke and to build it higher," he said.Kolontar is a stone's throw from the dam from which a two-metre-high (six-and-a-half-feet) flood of foul-smelling red mud poured into into homes, fields and rivers a week ago, with fears the pollution could enter the Danube River that flows on into several European countries.Around 800 volunteers were helping 900 police, disaster relief workers and firefighters at the site on Sunday, Dobson said."We are working on the reconstruction of the dam and also creating many smaller ones on the way to the village so, in case of a new flood, they will slow the sludge," disaster relief services spokeswoman Gyorgyi Tottos told AFP.About 1,000 people were evacuated from Kolontar and the nearby village of Devecser on Saturday, most taking refuge with friends and relatives in the town of Ajka, 160 kilometres (100 miles) from the capital Budapest, officials said.About 46 wounded were still in hospital Sunday, Tottos said, most treated for burns from the chemicals which also killed livestock and fish."They don't have life-threatening injuries, but some will need plastic surgery," said Jeno Racz, director of the Veszprem county hospital."The most serious injuries are second- and third-degreee burns," he told AFP

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