The Hungarian government fired the head of the country’s weather forecasting service and its deputy on Monday, two days after a major holiday fireworks display planned in Budapest was postponed due to fears of bad weather that never materialized.
Kornelia Radics and Gyula Horvath of the National Meteorological Agency (NMS) were dismissed from their posts by technology and industry minister Laszlo Palkovics.
The announcement came a day after pro-government media criticized the weather agency, whose forecast of thunderstorms and gale-force winds led to the cancellation of fireworks on Saturday.
“They provided misleading information about the extent of the bad weather, which misled the operational team responsible for safety.”
In 2006, the festivities were marred by a violent storm that killed five people and injured several hundred, spreading panic among the more than a million people gathered to watch the show on the Danube.
The NMS agency apologized on Sunday, citing “a factor of uncertainty inherent in the meteorology profession”.
“They couldn’t produce the desired weather, they were fired. No, this is not a dictatorship in Central Asia; this is Fidesz’s Hungary,” Andras Fekete-Gyor of the Momentum Opposition Movement said ironically on Facebook, referring to the ruling party.
The fireworks display, billed as “the biggest in Europe” to celebrate the “millennial Hungarian state”, has been rescheduled for next Saturday (August 27).
In July, the opposition called for the event to be cancelled, denouncing it as “a waste of money” at a time when Viktor Orban’s nationalist government is demanding sacrifices from people in a time of economic hardship.