Did Czech leaders ignore the floods that hit the Czech Republic in September 2024, not visiting the places most damaged by the disaster, unlike Slovak President Peter Pellegrini in his home country? No, that's not true: Czech President Petr Pavel and Prime Minister Petr Fiala and other ministers visited the region affected by the calamity. The government had also warned of the risks due to heavy incoming rain and followed closely the developing situation.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on September 17, 2024. It shows a social media post by Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, who visited flooded areas in Slovakia and thanked emergency services for helping citizens. The video has a text overlay in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff as:
Where are our politicians and our president?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 09:05:00 2024 UTC)
The video above shows a reel on the official Facebook account of Slovak President Peter Pellegrini on September 15, 2024 (archived here). Pellegrini shows and says, in the reel, that he visited in person the flooded areas in Devinska Nova Ves, a district of Slovakia's capital Bratislava.
The official X (formerly Twitter) accounts of Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and the Czech government posted the first warning about the possibility of flooding (archived here) due to incoming heavy rains on September 11, 2024. A day later, Fiala announced that he had "preventively" decided to set up a Central Crisis Staff (archived here) to prepare for worst-case scenarios on September 13, 2024. It was followed by a Central Flood Commission meeting (archived here) on September 14, 2024, and another Central Crisis Staff session, as Fiala shared in his X posts.
On September 15, 2024, Fiala posted (archived here), as translated by Lead Stories staff: "We must now devote all our energies at all levels to crisis management in order to protect lives and property." The post added that by the following day, there should be more clarity on the extent of at least some of the damage caused by the extreme rainfall. He also announced he had called an emergency cabinet meeting the following day at 6 pm. The press conference after the extraordinary government meeting held on September 16, 2024, where the government also debated financial aid for the affected regions, can be seen here (archived here).
The day after the evening government meeting, Fiala visited the northeastern part of the Czech Republic, which was hit the hardest by the floods. Fiala´s X posts showing him visiting the Moravian-Silesian region in the northeast part of the Czech Republic, the one which suffered the most from the floodings on September 17, 2024, can be seen here (archived here), or here (archived here), or here (archived here). In another post, Fiala is seen with Minister of Transport Martin Kupka, looking at the main train station (archived here) in Ostrava, the largest city in the region, which was also damaged by the flooding.
Martin Kupka´s post from his visit to Ostrava on September 17, 2024, can be seen here (archived here). Czech Minister of Finance Zbynek Stanjura is also visiting Opava, another town in the region, on September 17, 2024, in a Czech Ministry of Finance X post (archived here).
Fiala then chaired another government meeting dedicated to the flooding emergency in the country on September 18, 2024 (archived here). He also said the government would set aside 40 billion koruna for flood relief (archived here). On September 19, 2024, Fiala traveled to Wroclaw, Poland, to meet, along with other heads of State, with Ursula von der Leyen, who pledged to release 2 billion euros from the EU cohesion funds for flood relief in the Czech Republic (archived here).
The Czech President Petr Pavel also visited the northeast part of the country, talking to people and helping with relief efforts, as seen in his post on X from September 18, 2024 (archived here).
