Humble heroes

As you might have heard, we have really bad floods this summer, the worst in the last 40 years, not only on small rivers but also on the Danube and its main in-coming rivers. It's been raining a lot, every day for almost a month and it does not seem to stop. A few tens of people died and 20.000 left their houses, but the unusual thing is that big towns by the Danube were flooded too.
Galati is one of them, a big town and an important port. We like it there, for some reasons. It was partly flooded and a high flood was approaching, so a disaster was feared, despite the piers that were being built to avoid it. Voluntaries came from all over to work for that, the authorities were seeking another solution, even a controlled flooding of a nearby area, but it would have meant more damage. It was growing worse because both the Danube and a big in-coming river were overflowing simultaneously.
As the prime-minister was inspecting the area, one of the voluntary workers approached him and told him he had worked for 10 years at the artificial channel connecting the Danube to the sea, and he knew there was a particular lock there, between very different water levels. If that was open, he said, it could take part of the exceeding flow.
The ministry was reticent at first, but then the suggestion was put into practice and proved right. The lock could overtake 500 cubic meters per second, which was enough for the moment.
The red code for floods is not over, it might take as long as one more month to be out of danger, but that particular moment was surpassed. Thanks to a simple suggestion, made by someone who knew the facts not from diagrams, but from real life and work. The question is: why did not specialists think of that?