Vienna (U.P.) July 14, 1954 American and Russian troops toiled shoulder to shoulder last night to stave off new disaster as flood crests ripped a half-mile swath through and surged to new danger levels elsewhere in Central Europe. Fifty Americans joined forces with the Russians to save a dam near the U.S. Air Force Base at Tulln, northwest of Vienna.
Austrian Chancellor Julius Raab praised Russians and Americans alike for their "excellent help" in five days of round-the-clock disaster operations. The death toll in Austria and Germany stood at 37 and some 70,000 persons have been evacuated from their homes so far. Conservative estimates place the total damage at $100,000,000. The situation was worse in Austrian rural areas where Raab said the damage is on such a scale that the government can make no accurate estimate of its extent. Countries behind the Iron Curtain were also battered by the pent-up waters. Prague radio said the situation in parts of Czechoslovakia is "catastrophic: and Radio Budapest said buildings are being evacuated in flooded areas of Hungary. The communist radio in East German said all of the 120,000 people in Dessau may have to be evacuated despite a "hard fight" by Communist troops an police against the rising Mulde River "My boys were riding along in trucks with sandbags when they saw the Russians working on this dam at the village of Muckendorf," Rybos said. "If that dam goes so does the village. My boys didn’t hesitate even though that’s Soviet territory. They hopped off the trucks and went to work. They’ll probably there with the Russians right through the night." Rybos said that with the help of sandbags, gravel, rubble, shovels, and searchlights the American-Russian team hopes to save the village. Austrian officials are confident that Vienna’s sturdy levees will save the city itself from major disaster, and that the flood crest would start dropping today.
The rampaging Danube River, choked with tons of debris and dead animals, reached its highest level in Vienna since 1899 and was still rising at nightfall.
Maj. Karol Rybos, Commandant of the U.S. air base at Tulln told how men of his command joined forces with the Russians to fight the common enemy.
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"When we got there the Russians were already there. We didn’t say anything and they didn’t say anything. We both had trucks there. "Another Russian truck drove up with rocks and sandbags on it. Three of us started working. A drawling quiet-spoken veteran of 15 years in the service, Morris said he "was never worried a bit."