GIs Evacuate as Balkan River Floods Camp

The Sava River overflowed its banks in the darkness Thursday morning and swept through the U.S. Army’s primitive tent town, drenching about 140 soldiers unable to escape the frigid water and causing the evacuation of almost half the soldiers stationed here.

No soldiers were seriously injured, although eight were brought to a hospital tent to be watched for signs of frostbite and one officer injured his knee in the rush to evacuate the troops.

The flooding occurred after a levee broke, apparently under the strain of recent heavy snow and rain.

Late Thursday, it remained unclear how long--or even if--the flood would delay Army efforts to erect a bridge over the river, a crucial gateway for U.S. troops deploying on the peacekeeping mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The incident came the day after about 400 French Legionnaires had to be evacuated from flooding river water near Mostar in southern Bosnia.

Despite the weather-linked problems, however, senior commanders of the NATO-led Implementation Force, or IFOR, on Thursday provided upbeat assessments of the mission’s initial days.

British Lt. Gen. Michael Walker, commander of NATO ground forces in Bosnia, said weather remains the biggest obstacle to a peace-enforcement mission that is otherwise proceeding with remarkable success.

“I’m satisfied,” Walker told reporters in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. “It’s a honeymoon period. We are in the early days. . . . But the spirit within all parties gives me cause for optimism.”

U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, overall commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, also was among NATO officials who used the one-week mark of the peace mission Thursday to praise its success thus far.

Smith noted that the Bosnian Serb forces and the Muslim-led government had complied readily with an initial deadline to withdraw from designated front-line positions. “There will be bumps ahead in the road,” he said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. But the signs so far are positive, he said.

“The expectations [among Bosnians] for an immediate return to this investment in peace are high,” he said. “There will be isolated incidents, . . . but we will have to work our way through that. . . . I am not naive enough to think the honeymoon will last 360 more days, but I am an optimist.”

Smith said he has been surprised at how quickly the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces have been able to move into Serb-held territory. This was an issue that NATO planners debated for some time before the mission began, he said, with considerable skepticism that it would be safe to do it for months.

But troops moved in the first day, and one headquarters has already been set up in a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo. Smith said another is being considered for Banja Luka, the Serbian stronghold in northern Bosnia to which Smith will travel today.

He indicated, as others have, that the most complex mission for the NATO forces is the reunification of Sarajevo, where Serbs are protesting the return of Serb-held suburbs to Muslim-Croat government control. He said he hoped the presence of IFOR troops would convince the Serbs that they will be safe.

“I can’t guarantee the security of every family,” he said. But “by being present, we can reduce fears by offering a more stable environment.”

Meanwhile, in Zupanja, U.S. troops were recovering from the flood.

Bone-tired soldiers stationed by the river had awakened around 3 a.m. as the call to flee spread through the tents, an alarm that some dismissed as a bad joke and others simply slept through. Icy water surged into an engineers camp, forcing some soldiers to wade through what they described as nearly waist-deep water to reach muddy ground.

“You don’t feel anything in your feet, and it’s hard to walk,” said Pvt. Dewey Snavely, 20, a bulldozer operator.

The Sava River, dubbed by residents the “Erratic River,” is known to flood frequently but usually does not overflow until March, according to local officials. The water covered the riverbanks, stretching more than 200 yards past the previous waterline and flooding the very area meant to sustain the bridge that will allow U.S. troops here to cross into Bosnia. Army officials are now considering whether to stick with this bridge site or switch to another.

“I’m looking at all the options,” said Col. Steven R. Hawkins, commander of the 1st Armored Division’s engineering brigade.

At the main headquarters of the NATO-led force in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, senior military officers indicated that the focus remains on Zupanja for the river crossing.

“The Zupanja site currently remains the bridge construction point over the Sava River,” commented a senior officer.

“It’s not a setback per se,” said Brig. Gen. James P. O’Neal, the 1st Armored Division’s assistant commander for support. “This is a peace mission. . . . This is not a rush to cross the river. We are building our way into the Balkans. Why risk life and limb?”

The troops were positioned close to the river because Army officials wanted them only a short distance from their work sites, O’Neal explained.

Army engineers say they are hampered by a lack of adequate information about the Sava River, which is affected, in part, by a drainage basin in Bosnia. Because of the war, little data has been passed along.

Hoping to plug the void, U.S. military officials have worked from satellite information as well as computer analysis systems, which predict river flow based on measurements of such factors as width, depth and current.

O’Neal said the Army will work closely with several local officials, including engineers from the Croatian army.

Speaking through an interpreter, Damjan Puljic, representative of the Croatian Water Authority in Zupanja, said the U.S. Army had not contacted his office for information until the day before the Sava overflowed. Asked if he was surprised by the Americans’ choice of bridge sites, Puljic said: “Very surprised. Because it is expected to flood.”

But winter flooding “happens only once in five or 10 years,” said Puljic.

The challenge for the Army will be not building the bridge itself but crossing the muddy swamp now surrounding the river.

For the soldiers, some of whom had spent nearly eight days crisscrossing the countries between Germany and Croatia aboard trains that sometimes lacked heat and electricity, the harrowing night was just another affront to be endured.

Staff Sgt. David Evans, a native of Jacksonville, N.C., remembered awakening to people yelling. In an effort to keep the calm, he shouted for everyone to “quit panicking.” Then he opened the flap of the tent, and “everyone panicked.”

Army officials have been monitoring the Sava River as it has risen about 10 feet in the past week. During the past day, the river rose almost two feet, said Hawkins, the commander of the engineers.

Aware of the possibility of flooding but believing the river would not abruptly rise, the commanding officers of two engineering companies and one brigade decided Wednesday evening that the river campsites would be safe until morning, when they could be more easily evacuated.

When soldiers first arrived at this tent camp last week and discovered they would reside between a levee and the river, many figured the equation would lead to trouble.

“I’m no big-time college graduate, but I noticed that big ol’ river on one side and we staged inside a dike,” said one soldier. “Where’s the sense in that?”

Several hours after the flood hit the site, senior officers at IFOR headquarters in Zagreb seemed unaware of the new problems at Zupanja. At a late morning briefing, the IFOR chief of staff, U.S. Lt. Gen. William G. Carter, told reporters: “Crossing the Sava at Zupanja is on schedule. The bridge should be in place on the 30th [of December] and we should be crossing on the 30th.”

Carter added that most of the 400 French Legionnaires evacuated Wednesday from their flooded riverside encampment near Mostar were being relocated temporarily at the city’s airport, although a few had been transferred to Ploce, a Croatian port town.

He said the French troops had lost some equipment and would require three or four days to reestablish an adequate camp, but that IFOR’s overall deployment would be largely unaffected by the difficulties.

“For the soldiers who lost everything, it may be a life-defining experience, but as part of the overall picture, it is minor,” Carter said.

Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Sarajevo and Tyler Marshall in Zagreb contributed to this report.