Severe flooding in central and eastern Europe has killed at least 16 people and the situation could worsen as river levels continue to rise.
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Severe flooding in central and eastern Europe has killed at least 16 people and the situation could worsen as river levels continue to rise.
Foreign news agencies reported that the death toll from heavy rains and flooding in Central and Eastern Europe has risen to at least 16 on Monday, September 16, 2024, with many more missing, while authorities in several countries warned that the worst is yet to come.
Czech police chief Martin Vondracek told local media on Monday that a woman drowned after a river near the northeastern town of Bruntál burst its banks and flooded the town, with seven people still missing.
In Austria, two men in their 70s and 80s drowned after being trapped in their flooded homes in Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf in the northeastern state of Lower Austria, which was hit hard by the storm after a firefighter died in the line of duty over the weekend.
In Poland, the death toll has risen to six after a surgeon drowned in the town of Nysa while returning from hospital, while four more died in the towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój in the south of the country.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been evacuated after a low-pressure area dubbed Storm Boris dumped widespread rain, causing flooding that broke dams, submerged roads and uprooted power lines and flooded entire towns.
In Romania, six people were killed over the weekend, with forecasts saying the rain would ease on Monday, but rivers across the country are unlikely to rise above their peaks for days, leaving major cities bracing for major flooding.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an emergency cabinet meeting to speed up approval of budget and relief for those affected, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban canceled all foreign trips to stay afloat.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the flooding in Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and Poland was “very alarming” and that Germany expressed its condolences for the deaths and missing people and offered its support.
Hungary’s Budapest is bracing for possible severe flooding as the Danube continues to rise, as is Bratislava in Slovakia, while Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation was getting worse, especially in Lower Austria, which has been declared a disaster area.
More than 10,000 rescue and relief workers have been dispatched to Lower Austria and 1,100 homes have been evacuated, Nehammer said. But Lower Austria Governor Johanna Michel-Leitner said many people were facing a difficult time, possibly the hardest of their lives.
So far, flooding has caused 12 dams in Austria to burst, leaving thousands without power or running water, while more than 25,000 people in the municipality of Lilienfeld have been completely cut off from the outside world.
Czech Prime Minister Peter Fiala said at least 12,000 people across the country had been evacuated due to flooding. Although the rain had stopped in most affected areas, the situation remained critical as the storm continued to move west and river levels continued to rise.
Meanwhile, a power plant that supplies hot water and gas to Ostrava, the Czech Republic’s third largest city, was temporarily shut down due to flooding.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Siolacu said his country was cleaning up the damage and seeing what could be salvaged, adding that the flooding was almost three times larger than the worst in 2013.