2024-09-16 13:44:25
The death toll from heavy rain and flooding in central and eastern Europe has risen to at least 16, with several people still missing. Deaths have been reported in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria as authorities in countries hit by Storm Boris warn that the worst may be yet to come.
Czech police chief Martin Vodrasek told local radio on Monday that a woman had drowned in an overflowing stream near Brundal, a town of about 15,000 in the country’s northeast, and that seven others were missing.
In Austria, local media reported that two men in their 70s and 80s drowned after being caught by rising waters in their homes in the towns of Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf, both in the hard-hit northeastern state of Lower Austria.
Vienna
The death toll in Poland rose to six after a surgeon returning from hospital duty drowned in the southwestern town of Nysa and four died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biala and Lądek-Zdrój.
Hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes across Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia when Storm Boris unleashed what one mayor described as “devastation of epic proportions”.
A flooded city in the Czech Republic
Dams have broken, roads have flooded, power has been knocked out by the floods and entire neighborhoods are under water in some places. “I’ve lived here for 16 years and I’ve never seen floods like this before,” said Judith Dickson from Austria on public radio.
Six people died in Romania over the weekend, one in Poland and a firefighter in Austria.
Damaged areas without power
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, called for an emergency cabinet meeting to speed up financial and other support for victims, while his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, canceled all international commitments.
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 the dead and missing”. and that he was ready to help.
Romania
Hungary’s capital, Budapest, struggled to prepare for major floods as the Danube rose, as did Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation is “continually worsening”, especially in Lower Austria, which has been declared a disaster area.
More than 10,000 relief workers had evacuated 1,100 homes in the state, he said. The governor of the region, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said that many people are facing “difficult and dramatic times … perhaps the most difficult times of their lives”.
The municipality of Lilienfeld, with about 25,000 inhabitants, was completely cut off from the outside world, local media reported. So far, 12 dams have broken and thousands of families have been left without electricity and water, authorities said.
12,000 were displaced from their homes in the Czech Republic
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala asked citizens to “follow the instructions of the mayors and firefighters”. By Sunday night, he said, emergency services had dealt with 7,884 incidents and 119,000 families were without power.
At least 12,000 people had been evacuated from their homes across the country, Fiala said, adding that although the rain had stopped in the affected areas, the situation would become critical for others as the storm moved on. west and rising rivers.
Czech Republic
“The days continue to be very difficult for many people, unfortunately,” said Fiala on Monday, with 207 areas across the country facing flood conditions. The most important situation was in southern Bohemia, he said, adding: “Please be careful and responsible.”
The Morava River flooded about 70 percent of the Czech city of Litovel, 140 miles (230 kilometers) east of the capital Prague, overnight, its mayor told local media, closing schools and health facilities.
In the country’s third largest city, Ostrava, a power plant that supplies heat and hot water to the city was forced to close. Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in the towns of Krnov and Český Těšín.
In Opava, up to 10,000 people out of a population of about 56,000 were told to move to higher ground. “There is no reason to wait,” the mayor, Tomáš Navrátil, told Czech public radio, saying the situation is worse than during the last catastrophic floods in 1997, known as “the flood of the century “.
Romania
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said the country would “clean up and see what can be salvaged”, adding that compared to the worst recent floods in 2013, “the amount of water was almost three times more “.
A resident of the Romanian village of Pechea, in the affected Galati region told AFP: “The water entered the house, destroyed the walls, everything. It took the chickens, the rabbits, everything. It took the oven, the washing machine, the fridge. I have nothing left.”
With information from the Guardian
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