Under the leadership of Prime Minister Edi Rama, the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Civil Emergencies convened this morning at the operational headquarters in the Prime Minister’s Office. The meeting reviewed and updated the situation caused by the severe weather of recent days, due to exceptionally intense rainfall.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: These days have been exhausting for everyone, and extremely difficult, both for the families who have had water enter their homes and for the public servants who have remained on duty day and night in response to this natural emergency.
This prolonged, cold and heavy rain has worn everyone down. Beyond images of flooded roads, damaged homes and disrupted work, increased difficulties in mobility, property damage and the loss of livestock create stress, frustration and, in some cases, anger.
I know that the word “patience” may sound to some like an unnecessary call for restraint, but patience is essential, because what we are experiencing is not simply bad weather.
It has affected an entire region: from Italy to Greece, from Montenegro to Kosovo, and further north to Serbia and Croatia; from North Macedonia to Turkey. The same cold, the same rain, the same snow and the same flooding and blockages have created similar hardship for people across the region.
A cold air mass from the north has collided with a warm, humid Mediterranean air mass, creating an atmospheric vortex over Southeast Europe, resulting in continuous rainfall and very low temperatures. This is why rivers rise again before they recede; why the soil remains saturated; and that’s why rainfall and snowfall reach abnormal levels. Climate change does not only mean hotter summers. It means disrupted seasons, slower-moving atmospheric systems and therefore more unpredictable patterns, as well as more extreme and persistent weather: more droughts, more fires, more atmospheric vortices and more floods. This is the new climate reality in which we live. It is no longer the climate we grew up in.
Of course, when we continue to throw waste along roads or set forests on fire, the consequences of climate change become even more severe, as happened in Shkozet and elsewhere due to the overwhelming volume of plastic carried by overflowing rivers, which clogged major drainage canals.
At present, rainfall levels across the country have decreased, except for Durrës, where 41 mm of rain has been recorded. A 54-year-old municipal employee in Durrës has been found drowned after being reported missing the previous day.
So far nationwide, 1,587 homes have been affected by water intrusion; 339 people and 51 families have been evacuated. Water presence has also been identified across 13,211 hectares of agricultural land, some of which have been flooded, as well as in several health centres and educational facilities.
Rainfall has been extraordinary, reaching up to 300 mm, meaning more than the average rainfall for an entire month. In other words, the average thirty-day January rainfall fell over a period of three to four days. As I said earlier, this phenomenon, as a result of climate change, is becoming increasingly common worldwide. In some parts of the western lowlands, rainfall over these four to five days accounted for around 25%, or one quarter, of the annual average total.
As a consequence of this significant increased load on waterways, including high-water canals, main drainage collectors, mountain streams and the rivers Drin, Buna, Mat, Drojë, Ishëm, Erzen, Shkumbin, Devoll, Osum, Seman and Vjosa, flooding has occurred despite the broadly renewed water protection infrastructure, as a result of continuous investment over the past decade.
Pumping stations have operated continuously at full capacity, discharging significant volumes of water and preventing consequences far more severe than those caused by these days of rainfall.
I wish to inform you that before the rainy season began, the irrigation and drainage directorates ensured full preparedness of the main drainage canals, high-water canals, pumping stations and, of course, a fleet of 29 excavators under the central directorate.
The safety of river embankments and reservoir dams was also inspected. This entire infrastructure has functioned and withstood rainfall volumes up to the designed safety thresholds. Beyond those thresholds, as in the case of these exceptionally abnormal rainfalls, overflow from natural watercourses and consequent flooding in particularly vulnerable locations is objectively unavoidable in any country, not only in Albania, but anywhere on the planet.
We should also note that for years we have been implementing a drainage infrastructure maintenance process: in addition to the full overhaul of seven pumping stations during the summer season, each year we remove around 2.5 million cubic metres of silt and debris from the main drainage canals over a length of approximately 300 kilometres.
Last year alone, we invested nearly €25 million in this drainage infrastructure. This year, municipalities will invest €11 million, or 8% more than last year.
To give a full picture of the transformation achieved in this sector, investments of approximately €250 million over the past decade have reconstructed 536 irrigation and drainage canals that had been drastically reduced in effectiveness; significantly reinforced embankments that used to collapse at the first storm; restored the operation of 12 pumping stations that had been inactive for years; increased the safety of 44 high-risk dams; and substantially expanded excavator fleet capacities at local level as well.
Beyond these investments, our greatest and most successful investment has been the structural reform and transformation of our emergency response bodies, the army, the police, the energy sector and agriculture services. They have changed from uncoordinated structures without resources and poorly equipped, into structures that mobilize automatically not when the storm begins, but as soon as meteorological monitoring signals a storm.
Of course, there are still lessons to learn and gaps to close, but the reality is this: while unusual rainfall in recent days struck and flooded locations across our entire region, Albania did not respond as it used to, when an ordinary rain would “flood everything,” because Albania today is different. The state’s response is different, and protection and guarantees for affected families are different.
Therefore, today I want to assure those affected that we would meet every obligation towards them with the same human, institutional and political dignity, whether for homes or livestock.
At the same time, I want to stress that intensive work and uninterrupted mobilization—24 hours across the territory wherever needed—by all state structures and municipalities will continue until this difficult meteorological situation is overcome. I also urge all members of the governing majority present in this meeting via Zoom to remain engaged today, tomorrow and after the difficult moment has passed, alongside people, with people and for people.
Thank you, and I now give the floor to the ministers who are on the frontline of this engagement due to their responsibilities, to present a concise overview of the current situation.
