Emergency Traffic Situation in Hungary, 2 February 2014, Budapest

Please allow me to inform you about the current situation around Hungary. An emergency road traffic situation came about yesterday. This is the bad news, and the good news is that the weather conditions were not as extreme here in Hungary as they were in other countries such as Serbia. We had serious fears. In Slovenia, Austria and Serbia, conditions were extreme. Serbia, and especially the area south of Szabadka, was hit the worst. The good news is that the storm that is raging there will pass by Hungary, or at the worst we will only feel the winds of this extreme weather. However, the traffic situation remains extremely difficult. Four of our settlements cannot be accessed by road. Instead of the snowdrifts that are usual for this time of year, the current situation is caused by sleet and the subsequent layer of ice on the roads. None of the settlements are currently accessible by car. I would like to congratulate the disaster management authority, the police and the army, the latter of which for being on stand-by. Everyone has been doing their job. This means that we received the forecasts in due time from the meteorological office. The forecasts were very accurate, which is a key point; at such times we must rely on meteorological forecasts, and the people from the national meteorological service deserve acknowledgment because they gave us highly accurate forecasts. The measures taken were also based on this precision. The essence of our measures was mobilisation and providing information. I would like to inform the press that cooperation between the public and the state and state institutions was downright excellent. As far as I can see, people not only received precise information on time, but they also took it seriously. If this were not the case, then the country would still be full of cars that skidded off the road, and the situation could easily be similar to around this time last year, when cars that had skidded out of control and stopped in the middle of the road practically put road transport in Hungary to a standstill. It was a good decision to stop heavy goods vehicles at the border. According to the latest information, 1247 heavy goods vehicles are currently waiting at the border, having not been let into the country. This is the correct thing to do, and the ban on heavy goods vehicles will remain in force, with no vehicles heavier than 7.5 tons allowed onto our road network. The ban will be lifted gradually as the situation improves. Where the situation is better, they will be allowed in. According to the latest forecasts, the weather that has caused these extreme conditions will be pulling back. The situation will improve significantly in the eastern part of the country by midday today, but the situation continues to be serious in western regions, as a result of which the current warnings and bans will remain in force until tomorrow in the western part of the country. I would ask those who live in the western part of the country continue to take the requests of state institutions seriously, while the situation of those I the east will hopefully improve significantly by this afternoon. All of the country's traffic police have been assigned to active duty on the country's roads within the framework of mobilisation, and this will remain so throughout today; thank you to the Minister of Interior for this. The operative task groups of the disaster management authority are doing their job in every county. The disaster management authority is on official stand-by with 1897 people and 687 fire service vehicles, and I would like to indicate that they have already saved several lives. Some people became trapped in their cars after skidding off the road. Congratulations on your efforts! A further 210 staff and 52 pieces of technical equipment from the disaster management authority are also on stand-by, and have performed technical salvage operations on 38 occasions, while national road maintenance company is out on the roads doing their duty with 377 people and 357 vehicles. I have also received a report from the army, and was given the reassuring information by the General that the army's equipment and staff is also available if required, but it seems that this has not been necessary so far, and the way things look it is highly probably that there will be no need to mobilise the army, but they are on stand-by if things take a turn for the worse. The weather conditions that have caused these appalling conditions and transport difficulties is withdrawing, and we hope that things will get back to normal by Monday. On Monday, it would seem, everyone throughout Hungary will be able to go to work in the morning. Until then, especially in the western part of the country, we recommend that everyone enjoys family programmes.

Thank you for your kind attention.

(Prime Minister’s Office)