Prague mayor: Prague can be ready to fight floods in half a day

Prague Mayor Pavel Bem has said that the anti-flood exercise underway in Prague this weekend has shown that the city can be ready to cope with flooding in half a day. It took rescuers precisely half a day to erect barriers along the Vltava River to protect the city, Mr Bem said. Some 500 fire fighters and police officers raised 2.5 kilometres of portable aluminium walls which are designed to protect the city against a 11-metre flood wave, the level which the Vltava River reached during the 2002 floods that cost the city 26 billion crowns (over a billion dollars). The massive exercise, at an overall cost of 2 million crowns (80,000 dollars), will end on Sunday.