The death toll from torrential rains and floods in Central and Eastern Europe has risen to at least 16 people, with several more still missing. Authorities also reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria and warned that the worst may be yet to come.
Czech police chief Martin Vondrašek told local radio on Monday that one woman had drowned in a flooded river near Brunnthal, a town of about 15,000 people in the country's northeast, and seven more people were still missing.
In Austria, Local media reported. Two men, aged 70 and 80, drowned in their homes after becoming trapped by rising floodwaters in the towns of Boeheimkirchen and Sierndorf in Lower Austria, the hardest-hit state in northeastern Austria.
The death toll rose to six after a surgeon drowned in the southwestern Polish town of Nysa while returning from work at a hospital, fire officials said, while four people died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biala and Łódek-Zdroj.
Storm Boris caused what one mayor described as a “catastrophe of epic proportions”, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes across swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
The floods caused dams to burst, flooding roads, knocking out power and leaving entire communities underwater. “I've lived here for 16 years and I've never seen flooding like this,” Judith Dixon, an Austrian woman, told public radio.
Six people were killed in Romania over the weekend, one in Poland and one firefighter in Austria. The rains were expected to ease on Monday but several major cities were bracing for potentially devastating flooding as some rivers are unlikely to reach their highest levels for several days.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an emergency cabinet meeting to speed up financial and other assistance to victims, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban canceled all international commitments.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described images of 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 stood ready to help.
The Hungarian capital Budapest was rushing to prepare for major flooding as the Danube rises, as was the Slovakian capital Bratislava. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation “continues to worsen,” especially in southern Austria, which has been declared a disaster zone.
He said more than 10,000 rescue workers had evacuated 1,100 homes in the state. Johanna Mikl-Leitner, governor of the Austrian state of Lower Austria, said many people in her state were facing “difficult and dramatic times… probably the most difficult times of their lives.”
The city of Lilienfeld, which has a population of about 25,000, has been completely cut off from the outside world, local media reported. Authorities say 12 dams have collapsed, leaving thousands of homes without electricity or running water.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala urged people to “follow the instructions of mayors and firefighters.” He said emergency services had responded to 7,884 incidents and 119,000 homes were without power as of Sunday evening.
At least 12,000 people across the country had been evacuated from their homes, Fiala said, adding that while the rains had stopped in the hardest-hit areas, the situation would worsen in other areas as the storm moved west and river levels continued to rise.
“Unfortunately, these are very difficult days for many people.” Fiala said Monday.Floods have affected 207 regions across the country, with South Bohemia the most at risk, he said, adding: “Please be careful and act responsibly.”
Rising waters in the Morava river submerged about 70 percent of the Czech city of Litovel, 140 miles (230 kilometers) east of the capital, Prague, overnight, forcing the closure of schools and health facilities, the mayor told local media.
In Ostrava, the country's third-largest city, the power plant that provided the city with heating and hot water was forced to close, while thousands were evacuated from their homes in Krnov and Cesky Tesin.
In Opava, up to 10,000 people of the population of about 56,000 were asked to evacuate to higher ground. Mayor Tomáš Navratil told Czech public radio that “there is no reason to wait,” and that the situation was worse than during the last devastating flood in 1997, known as the “Flood of the Century.”
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolac said the country would “clean up and see what can be restored,” adding that “the amount of water is almost three times higher” compared with the worst recent floods in 2013.
“Water came into our house and destroyed the walls, everything. Our chickens, our rabbits, everything was washed away. Our oven, our washing machine, our fridge, everything was washed away. There's nothing left,” one resident of the Romanian village of Pecea in the affected Galati region told AFP.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed solidarity with those affected by the floods and said the EU would provide assistance.
