Disaster was predictable.
Just five days earlier, floods had wiped out towns in the Czech Republic, and waters were pushing down the Oder River toward Poland - straight for the heart of this historic city.Still, residents in Wroclaw's low-lying neighborhoods ignored police calls to evacuate. It hadn't rained for days and "nobody on our street believed such high water would really come," said Podwojsa Aniela, a retired French teacher.
Soon she was watching water rise toward the carpeted entrance of her second-floor apartment at the rate of one stair every half hour.
The floods - Central Europe's worst in 200 years - hit Czechs with sudden force. Though Poles had plenty of warning, government officials seemed unsure how to respond to the disaster and residents were reluctant to leave their homes - even as the death toll climbed to over 100.
Neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic in many ways have shared a common destiny since the fall of communism freed them to pursue democratic reforms. They are lock step in a march toward European integration, including an invitation to join NATO issued just as the rain hit and the Oder started rising. The floods dealt serious blows to their emerging free-market economies and tested the strength of their democratic restructuring.
Poland on many counts failed that test in its slow reaction to the worst disaster in recent memory. Local officials were shy to act without central government approval, and federal officials failed to grasp the magnitude of the growing catastrophe.
Even as the water rose, Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said that individuals who weren't insured had no one but themselves to blame and should expect no government help.
Conflicting reports of the flood's progress only contributed to Poles' confusion. The government urged the media to report only flood data released by the state meteorological institute.
"The whole of Poland and the central government was taken by surprise by the flood," a Wroclaw city spokesman, Maciej Nisza, admits. "The estimates of the (first) wave (of flooding) were just not correct."
By contrast, the Czechs had little warning. Rain had fallen for three days when firefighters started banging on doors in the village of Bochor, warning of advancing floodwaters. Though the wheat fields around them were flattened and soaked, villagers were skeptical.
"They looked at us like we were drunk," said fireman Milan Schilling. The nearest river was three miles away, and residents said the village hadn't flooded in 700 years.
Minutes later, raging waters washed away any doubts. Chunks of houses disappeared as if exploded by dynamite. Roofs crashed in as if the earth had shaken.
Immediately, the Czech government enacted a state of emergency and pledged $363 million in aid.
Two days before the flood hit, Wroclaw Mayor Bogdan Zdro-jew-ski ordered sandbagging along the mighty Oder, and his efforts saved the old city center, cleaned and painted for Pope John Paul II's visit in May.
But at the time, he says, he worried he was overreacting.
"I was afraid that I had exaggerated and that I had caused a panic," he told the Gazeta Wybrocza newspaper. "When the first sandbags came and the weather was sunny, my legs started to shake."
Still, many of Wroclaw's extensive waterways were not reinforced, and floods gushed into low-lying neighborhoods. Those areas - and scores of Polish villages - were devastated.
According to a survey of 960 people by the private PBS polling agency, nearly half of Poles believed the damage could have been minimized - and more than 70 percent of those blamed the government for not doing so. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
As the extent of the catastrophe became clear, the prime minister apologized for his remarks and announced government aid of $151 million and plans to borrow from the central bank.
The flood, however, already had left its mark in mud-filled basements - and a loss of government trust.