The death toll from heavy rains and floods in Central and Eastern Europe has risen to at least 16, and several more people are missing. Authorities reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria and warned that the worst was yet to come.
Czech police chief Martin Vondrašek told local radio on Monday that a woman had drowned in a stream that overflowed its banks near Bruntál, a town of about 15,000 people in the country’s northeast, while seven others were missing.
In Austria, local media reported that two men in their 70s and 80s drowned after being trapped by rising water in their homes in the towns of Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf, both in the hard-hit northeastern state of Lower Austria.
The death toll in Poland rose to six after a surgeon returning from hospital drowned in the southwestern town of Nysa, and four people died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój, firefighters said.
Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes across Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as Storm Boris caused what one mayor described as a “disaster of epic proportions”.
The floods caused dams to burst, streets were covered with water, electricity was cut off and in some places entire neighborhoods were submerged.
“I’ve lived here for 16 years and I’ve never seen floods like this,” one Austrian, Judith Dickson, told public radio.
Six people died in Romania over the weekend, as well as one in Poland and one firefighter in Austria. The rain is expected to stop early in the week, but several major cities are bracing for potentially catastrophic flooding nonetheless.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an emergency cabinet session to speed up financial and other support for the victims, while his counterpart in Hungary, Viktor Orban, canceled all international engagements.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the images from flooded areas in Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and Poland as “dramatic” and said Germany was “deeply saddened by the news of dead and missing people” and ready to help.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation “continues to deteriorate”, particularly in Lower Austria, which has been declared a disaster area.
More than 10,000 humanitarian workers evacuated 1,100 houses in the country, he said. The governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said many people there were facing “difficult and dramatic hours… probably the hardest hours of their lives”.
The municipality of Lilienfeld, with about 25,000 inhabitants, is completely cut off from the outside world, local media reports. So far, 12 dams have broken, and thousands of households have been left without electricity and water, the authorities announced.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala called on people to “follow the instructions of the mayor and firefighters.” As of Sunday evening, he said, emergency services had 7,884 incidents and 119,000 households were without power.
At least 12,000 people have been evacuated from their homes across the country, Fiala said, adding that while the rain has stopped in the most affected areas, the situation will become critical for others as the storm moves west and rivers continue to rise.
“Very difficult days for many people unfortunately continue,” Fiala said on Monday as 207 areas across the country faced flooding. The most critical situation was in the southern Czech Republic, he said, adding: “Please be careful and responsible.”
A swollen Morava left about 70 percent of the Czech town of Litovel, 230 kilometers east of the capital Prague, under water overnight, the mayor told local media, closing schools and health facilities.
In the third largest city in the country, Ostrava, the power plant that supplied the city with heat and hot water was forced to close. Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Krnovo and České Tešin.
In Opava, 10,000 people out of a population of around 56,000 were asked to move to a higher level.
“There is no reason to wait,” Mayor Tomas Navrátil told Czech Public Radio, adding that the situation is worse than during the last devastating floods in 1997, known as the “flood of the century”.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Colaku said that compared to the worst floods in 2013, “the amount of water is almost three times greater.”, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
photo: Klix.ba
