Was anyone there last night?
I thankfully decided to watch it on the tv (but TV2 and M1 stopped transmitting halfway through!) and looking back am very glad i did!
Must have been very scary and what angers me is that the weather forecasters had predicted such a storm.......but the advice seems to have been ignored by the organisers.......

ps. my avatar is a pic i took of the fireworks from LAST year....i doubt i would have got such a pic this year sadly.

Do you have any pics...

Even from the TV?

Bill,

In Africa

Bill,

Try these

http://www.fn.hu/kepkatalogus.php?catid=780

http://index.hu/gal/?dir=0608/bulvar/vihar4/

Hi,

We were there, TJ and me. Decided to watch it from the Margithíd, didn't see the weather forcast, arrived back from our holiday, had just enough time to take a shower before going to see the fireworks - got a bigger one out there

It was really startling, when we set out the sky was still perfectly clear, arrived around 20:45, a few thin clouds already and the Buda side occasionally lit up by far-off lightning, at least we thought, no thunder could be heard so we were convinced it must be miles and miles from us. At 21:00 as the first fireworks went up it started to drizzle, we were asking ourselves if it would rain after all, answer arrived in less than two minutes in the form of a violent blast of wind pouring the equal of two or three buckets of water on each and every one of us. We were soaked to the skin, half of the crowd took to their heels, some panicked, there wasn't much pushing around though, luckily there was enough space at the middle of the bridge, only the two side pavements were packed tightly. As we couldn't get any wetter we decided to stay. The morale was great by the way, those who stayed were all cheering and scoffed at the danger. I was in pretty high spirits too, the wind died away now and then and it was quite a victorious feeling to be standing at the rails watching the fireworks in spite of the raging weather. In fact we were waiting for the fireworks to stop and didn't understand why they kept on launching them when they were blown off horizontally as soon as they left the Lánchíd, we didn't see further than that. Then it was getting pretty uncomfortable, we only had a cardigan to protect our heads with and the wind was blowing so violently that we could hardly keep it over our shoulders, the rain, coming at us with more than 100 km/h felt like a thousand sharp little objects piercing our skin, empty bottles and cans were caught up and thrust against us, got a nice swollen wrist from one that struck me, wasn't so much fun by then, all the cheering died down, even the lousiest thought it wiser to head back for shelter. Luckily we didn't reach the streets before the wind calmed down (we could hardly walk, it was like fighting your way through a stormy mountain stream that kept changing its direction of flow) so we didn't see the flying tiles, my aunt was near the Ferenciek square, she told us that even the chimneys were breaking off and came sliding down from the roofs, people were pressing against the walls covering their heads. But as I said we missed the dodge the roofs part of the Budapest public wet T-shirt contest. As the people reached their cars they started to undress down to their underclothes, even an hour later you could see naked people driving around.

We didn't hear about the tragic events before late that night but we did suspect them - one could hear the sirens of the ambulance cars and fire engines all night.

Hope you're all safe and sound.

A.

As for who is responsible - naturally nobody. Everybody is pointing at somebody else, the firework organisers weren't warned by the meteorologists, the meteorologists sent an e-mail to the national organisation for the prevention of catastrophes, they didn't read the mail before late that night, the police were warned but said it wasn't their responsibility to call off the event, the mayor of Budapest takes no responsibility what so ever as the fireworks were ordered by the government, the government denies to have been in the position to cancel the fireworks and anyway they weren't officially informed of the coming storm. In the end the blame was given to the meteorologists.

I personally think that all of them could have called off the fireworks but nobody had the guts to do it, some feared to loose their money others feared to loose their position in case the storm didn't arrive or turned out to be a mere shower.

The result: 4 deaths, 300 wounded of which some are still in a critical state, 1 missing - disappeared in the Danube.

So well done every one of them - great team work.

A.

There's a short English video next to the BBC News article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5269642.stm

A much better video right bellow the French article (also in French though): http://info.france2.fr/europe/23549582-fr.php

I couldn't find any proper videos on any Hungarian sites. There are lots of amateur clips filmed from under bridges or doorsteps (found some here: http://www.origo.hu/idojaras/20060821apeldatlan.html). The professional cameras and equipment originally installed to film the fireworks were damaged and only one TV channel could continue broadcasting the fireworks in the storm.

A.