Eight people have died after a low-pressure system brought torrential downpours and widespread flooding over the weekend.
Five people were found dead in Romania, along with a firefighter in Austria, a person in Poland and one in Slovakia. The province surrounding Vienna has been declared a disaster zone and thousands have been evacuated in south-western Poland.
Two people are missing and five thousand homes were damaged in Romania as towns across seven counties were evacuated. Romanian authorities said that rainfall has weakened over the weekend, but is expected to continue into Monday.
South-western Poland has seen over a thousand people evacuated as river levels continued to rise in the counties of Nysa and Klodzko. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “the situation is very dramtic,” in a meeting in Klodzko. The town’s river has risen to over six meters which is three times the danger level.
Transport lines between Prudnik and Nysa were closed and in Nysa itself, a bridge has collapsed and the town is without power. The Golkowice border crossing into the Czech Republic has been shut by Polish authorities.
A quarter of a million homes in the Czech Republic are without power and ten thousand people have been evacuated in the worst flooding to hit the region since 1997.
Over five thousand homes have been damaged by flood water in Austria. In Vienna authorities have been unblocking roads and clearing debris. Vice-chancellor Werner Kogler said that a firefighter died on Sunday while responding to floods in the nation’s south.
Hungary’s capital Budapest is expecting the Danube River to rise to over eight meters as rainfall continues. Mayor Gergely Karacsony said that the city was well equipped to deal with the rising waters.
“According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” he said.
In other parts of the country, people have already been evacuated and emergency services have rescued anyone who has been trapped.
Photo: STOP by Chris Lovelock is available HERE and is used under a Creative Commons License. This image has not been modified.
