← Atlas catalogue V3 · Sonnet

Vistula · May 2010 · three records of differing precision (two about a breached embankment, one about an evacuation)

Where the Vistula breached the embankment

Select records to compare. We show only as much chronology as the sources support.

May 2010, day by day · event time as given in the source

What can be linked

Without JS: the comparisons of pairs and of the set of three records are shown below.

Order, yes, but only in days: the night of 18/19 May (Koćmierzów) falls before 23 May (Świniary).

Level of shared chronology: day

Interval
The calendar dates are 4–5 days apart, because the night of 18/19 spans two dates. Days with no record dated to the day: 20, 21, 22 May (Wilków covers the whole of May, but without a day).
Hour
Neither record gives the hour at which the embankment was breached. The interval in hours cannot be calculated, and a missing hour is not zero.
Geometry
Both records point to the place where the embankment was breached and to the outflow of water, but without coordinates and without an extent. These are two categories of information, not two positions on a map.
Sources
Different websites: Sandomierz Diocese (Koćmierzów) and OSP Słubice (volunteer fire brigade) with the Police (Świniary). The two accounts of Świniary agree on the day, which does not prove that they arose independently.

Held back: a shared hour-by-hour course of events and a map of the extent of the water.

The order cannot be established: Koćmierzów has two nights, Wilków only a month.

Level of shared chronology: month (interval)

Interval
None. The interval “May 2010” includes 18/19 May and the days before and after, so Wilków may have been earlier, later or at the same time. Wilków appears here as an interval (the whole of May, hatched band), not as a day on the timeline.
Hour
No hours in either record.
Geometry
Different things. Koćmierzów: the place where the embankment was breached and the outflow towards the right-bank part of Sandomierz. Wilków: a zone of evacuation of residents from the villages of the municipality, with no geometry of the breach. One must not be substituted for the other.
Sources
Different texts: Sandomierz Diocese (retrospective, 2020 according to V2) and the Police (15 July 2010 according to V2).

Held back: order, interval, hours and a shared map.

The order cannot be established: Świniary has a day (23 May), Wilków only a month.

Level of shared chronology: month (interval)

Interval
None. 23 May falls within the interval “May 2010”, so Wilków may have been before Świniary, after it, or on the same day.
Hour
No hours in either record.
Geometry
Świniary: the place where the embankment was breached and the outflow corridor into the valley. Wilków: an evacuation zone. Different geometries.
Sources
In the package both places point to the same Police text, “Dzień trwający 96 godzin” [The day that lasted 96 hours] (15 July 2010 according to V2). For Wilków it is the only text; Świniary also has the OSP Słubice account. A shared text is one source, not two. To be checked in the text itself.

Held back: order, interval and hours.

The three places have no shared chronology. Reconstruction held back.

Level of shared chronology: none shared

What can be done
Koćmierzów before Świniary, in days only (4–5 calendar days).
What cannot
Wilków appears here as an interval (the whole of May, hatched band), not as a day on the timeline: it knows only May. There are no hours in any record.
Geometry
The three records are three different categories: the place where the embankment was breached, the outflow of water and an evacuation zone. There are no coordinates and no shared, verified map of the extent.
Sources
Three texts about the places (Sandomierz Diocese, Police, OSP Słubice). The fourth address, Wody Polskie (Polish Waters), is general and gave a different date for Świniary. We do not decide which is correct, and we do not copy it here.

Held back: a single course of the flood, an hourly timeline and a map of the extent. A lack of documentation is not zero, nor an empty field to be filled in.

Diagram of three categories of information about a breached embankment Plan view, without scale and without coordinates. At the top a river, below it the line of the embankment with a gap, behind the embankment an outflow area and a broad outline of the evacuation zone. Which layers are mentioned in the selected records is described by the list below the drawing.
A diagram of categories of information, not a map. Position, sizes and distances are conventional. None of the three records in the material gives coordinates or the extent of the water.
  • Place where the embankment was breachedmentioned in the selected set
  • Flooded area or outflow corridor (extent unknown)mentioned in the selected set
  • Evacuation zone for residentsnot in the selected set

Interval in the set

Days with no record dated to the day: 20, 21, 22 May (Wilków covers the whole of May, but without a day). The absence of a record in the package does not prove that nothing happened.

The bar is the whole of May, each day the same width. Publication time and the time the material was created have no place here: they are separate clocks, described in the section Three records.

day given in the source only an interval is known (here: the whole of May) outside the record

Three records, three clocks

Each record has at least three times: when something happened, when the material was created and when it was published. A text from July 2010 may describe May, and a text from 2020 a night a decade earlier. The time of publication is not the time of the event. When the material does not give one of the times, the field is left empty and described. It is not zero or a point on the timeline.

Koćmierzów · in the set

A local account describes the night evacuation and the flooding of the right-bank part of Sandomierz after the embankment was breached at Koćmierzów. The record has a sequence of events, but no hourly model.

Event
night of 18/19 May 2010
Material created
not given in the material
Publication
2020, a retrospective after ten years (according to V2, to be checked on the source page)

GeometryThe place where the embankment was breached and the outflow towards the right-bank part of Sandomierz.

What is missingThe minute of the breach and the extent of the water in the following hours.

Sandomierz Diocese: Dziesięć lat po wielkiej wodzie [Ten years after the great flood] ↗

Wilków · in the set

The Police describe cooperation between aviation and firefighters and the evacuation by boat and helicopter from flooded villages of the Wilków municipality. It is a text about the work of rescuers. According to V2 (to be checked) it does not document the moment the embankment was damaged and does not give the geometry of the breach.

Event
May 2010, without day or hour
Material created
not given in the material
Publication
15 July 2010 (according to V2, to be checked). The July publication describes May and does not move the event to July.

GeometryThe evacuation zone for residents of the municipality's villages. No geometry of the breach.

What is missingThe moment the embankment was damaged and the hour-by-hour order in which farms were flooded.

Police: Dzień trwający 96 godzin [The day that lasted 96 hours] ↗

Świniary · in the set

OSP Słubice (the volunteer fire brigade) gives the day the embankment was breached at Świniary. The Police account from 2010 gives the same day.

Event
23 May 2010, two accounts agree on the day
Material created
not given in the material
Publication
Police: 15 July 2010 (according to V2). OSP Słubice: date not established in the material; the address concerns the 15th anniversary of the flood (to be checked).

GeometryThe place where the embankment was breached and the outflow corridor into the valley (V2 called it the Iłowsko-Dobrzykowska valley, to be checked).

What is missingA shared hour and proof that the accounts are independent. An archived text from Wody Polskie (Polish Waters) gave a different date for Świniary. The value has not been copied here.

OSP Słubice: 15. rocznica powodzi [15th anniversary of the flood] ↗ · other sources

How an embankment is breached in general: a general diagram

This is a separate, general cross-section. It does not depict any of the three places, has no scale and does not choose a cause, because the material in the package contains no expert assessment. It serves only to distinguish the point of the breach from the area onto which the water flows. The landward side is the land protected behind the embankment.

Stage 3 of 5: Loss of continuity

General diagram of a breach in an embankment, without scale Cross-section: on the left a river, in the middle the trapezoidal body of the embankment, on the right the protected land. The state of the drawing changes with the stage slider. A description of each stage is in the list beside or below the drawing.
On the left the river (the floodplain between embankments), in the middle the body of the embankment, on the right the landward side. Hatching marks an extent that the diagram cannot give. A general diagram, without scale, without a cause and without buildings.
  1. Rising water and pressure. Hypothetical model: high water in the floodplain between embankments presses on the slope on the river side. The embankment is still continuous.
  2. Seepage through the embankment body. Water seeps through the body and the subsoil. The diagram does not assume which mechanism failed, because the sources in the package contain no expert assessment.
  3. Loss of continuity. A breach forms in the body and water flows through to the protected side. There are several mechanisms of failure. The diagram does not choose the cause of any of the three breaches.
  4. Outflow onto the landward side. Water spreads out behind the embankment. The extent is hatched, because it is a quantity this diagram does not give. The point of the breach and the flooded area are two separate pieces of information.
  5. After the water recedes. The breach remains in the body, and the subsoil may be washed out. The river level falls, and the diagram still says nothing about the extent of the flooding.

Limits of this page

What we do not do here

  • We do not assemble a single course of the flood or a minute-by-minute reconstruction from the three records.
  • We do not draw the extent of the water. Both drawings are diagrams of categories of information, not maps.
  • We do not show houses, people or footage of the flooding. There are no photographs here: the material we have consists of texts, and the rights to photographs have not been checked.

What changed compared with V2

  • The verifier with drop-down lists was removed. It was replaced by editorial sentences beside the comparison and beside each record.
  • The notebook stored in the browser memory was removed: it added no knowledge about the subject and collected the user's text.
  • The table filter was removed. It was replaced by a comparison of two records and cards for all three at once.
  • The records and the diagram stages were separated. V2 suggested that Wilków “is at stage 4”. The diagram is now general.
  • The little houses on the landward side and the red hatching were removed. The unknown extent is shown by grey hatching.
  • Kept: the three places and their dates, the limits of precision, the spatial categories, the five stages of the general diagram, the sources and the note about the divergent date from Wody Polskie (Polish Waters).

For a human to check

  • Whether the links open the texts described and whether the sentences on this page summarise them faithfully. They were not opened when V3 was built.
  • Publication dates: 2020 (Diocese) and 15 July 2010 (Police) come from V2. The date of the OSP Słubice page is not established.
  • Whether the Police text for Wilków and for Świniary is the same article (this follows from the V2 links).
  • The name of the valley near Świniary and the value of the date from the archived text of Wody Polskie (Polish Waters).
  • Rights to any photographs and accounts. None have been used here.

Today: the historical extent of flooding in May 2010 is not today's safety boundary, and this page is neither a warning nor a risk assessment. Current information is provided by the official bulletins of the hydrological and crisis management services.

Sources

The links were taken over from the V2 package. The descriptions below come from that package. None of them was opened when V3 was built, so their content and availability need to be checked.

  1. Dziesięć lat po wielkiej wodzie [Ten years after the great flood] — Sandomierz Diocese ↗Used for: the night evacuation and Koćmierzów.
  2. Dzień trwający 96 godzin [The day that lasted 96 hours] — Police, 15 July 2010 ↗Used for: the aviation operation in Sandomierz, Wilków and Świniary. One text for several places.
  3. 15. rocznica powodzi [15th anniversary of the flood] — OSP Słubice ↗Used for: the date of 23 May 2010 at Świniary.
  4. Dziesięć lat po wielkiej powodzi [Ten years after the great flood] — Wody Polskie (Polish Waters) ↗An archived general article. According to V2 the address redirects, and its indexed content contained a different date for Świniary. It was not used as the basis for any date.