Back to history - Devastating floods in 1997

06. 10. 2022

 Once again, let us have a look into the FARMAK history; today, it is a key event of the 1990s. It has affected almost everyone of us, directly or indirectly, and with a hint that it concerns the year 1997, you will probably know. The following lines are personal memories of FARMAK’s owner, Ing. Jiří Žák.

“The Morava River flooded in July after five days of torrential rain. Before midnight of the day when the water rose, I was present at FARMAK in person. I arranged with our gatekeeper that they would call me if anything was wrong. Driving over the main bridge, it didn’t seem to me that the water was about to spill. But then it came like a tide... They called me at 4 a.m. (9 July 1997) that “we are under water”. The firemen told me that a Tatra truck would pick me up at the Senimo store. It was still possible to drive around the Black Road but moments after it was closed. The only dry spot was outside the company facility, at the site of today’s parking lot. It was there that a helicopter landed once or twice during the week when the company was underwater. Otherwise, we were more or less trapped. The road from the bridge was under water and the only way to reach Hradisko was by boat.

At the last minute, we tried to get things out of the warehouses to rescue them but it was too late. There were 200 engines to be repaired at the moment. They were dried up and repaired in Holice. We were grateful to the repairmen as we could hardly have restarted the company without them.

It took about a week for the water to recede. There were about 20-30 people in the facility all that time. Water remained at certain level for another month and below Hradisko it stayed in the fields so that the soil had to be blasted away to allow it to flow into the Morava River.

It took about 3 months for the company to return to working order. This is to be credited to the company’s employees, who worked hard cleaning up, drying, repairing etc. The drying process was not easy as we had to borrow the gensets and work at poorly accessible places. Even today, if you walk past the Unihala, you can see the high water level on the wall.

The photos show you the condition of the archive. At that time, it was located in the basement, which was clearly a mistake. However, no one expected millennial-scale floods. The archive contained all our documents. Some copies and documents were left upstairs in the offices but everything else was stored in the basement. Some of my colleagues tried to save the key drawings by drying them up. Today our archive is located upstairs in the warehouse; I wouldn’t put it in the basement again.

The products (finished products) were not destroyed but we had the raw materials for production stored in the basement... The damage amounted to over CZK 30 million. We didn’t have any “flood insurance” at that time so we were not entitled to any compensation and the bank wouldn’t lend us any more money. We solved it by opening a private loan in Switzerland for myself and lending money to purchase raw materials to start producing again. My colleagues said we would never repay that debt...

Another problem was that we were expecting an FDA inspection in January of 1998. Passing this inspection successfully was crucial for the company’s further operation. Well, we passed this test, being able to start our expansion to the US market.”