Devecser, Hungary (CNN) -- Trucks thunder along the mud-lined roads in the Hungarian village of Devecser. Military trucks, heavy goods vehicles, diggers -- all carrying plaster and gypsum to lower the pH value of the alkaline sludge -- drive up and down the roads to dilute the mud and bring in supplies for the emergency teams and the displaced residents.
Eva Maria's home was devastated by the sludge. "I was cooking," says the 88-year-old, pointing at a sauce-pan still filled with baking mixture, one week old on top of a mud-splattered stove.
"I heard this huge roar, saw the yard was already filled with this stuff". She locked herself in a third room and watched what she calls a "bloody ocean" rise up her window panes. "I prayed to the Virgin Mary and said 'Help me,' she says, "and then the tide seemed to go down. I can't believe I was spared".
She was among the lucky ones. Eight people died when the red sludge engulfed the villages of Kolontar, Devecser, and Somlovasarhely, in some places reaching several feet high, and more than 100 were injured.
Volunteers in the clean-up have already spent days shoveling the mud from her yard. Now work starts on the interior although Eva-Maria knows she'll never live there again. "I'm lucky, I own a second home," she says, looking around her sludge-soaked bedroom.
CNN
