By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Hungary braced on Sunday for the Danube River, Europe’s main waterway, to reach record levels as massive rainfall caused deadly flooding across Central and Eastern Europe, damaging homes and leaving many without power.

The difficulties came after at least five people died and thousands of homes were damaged by flooding in neighboring Romania’s eastern region on Saturday, officials said.

A firefighter also died during a flood rescue in Austria, and one person drowned in Poland as torrential rain caused by Storm Boris continued to wreak havoc across Central and Eastern Europe, authorities said.

The Austrian province surrounding the capital, Vienna, has been declared a disaster area, and its leaders have described “an unprecedented extreme situation.”

Surging river levels also put authorities on alert elsewhere in the region, including in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, where some 50 people died in flooding in 1997.

Officials in Slovakia even warned of the threat of flooding in Bratislava, the country’s capital, and similar situations were expected in Budapest.

The Tirol control center said that Southern Germany and parts of Austria were also struggling with German and Austrian mountain rescuers working to find a person buried by an avalanche in the northern Alps.

Officials explained that the avalanche struck in the Karwendel Mountains in Austria’s state of Tirol, not far south of the German border in the Vomp municipality.

SAVING LIVES

Tirol’s police said the man was a member of a hiking group of around 30 people who had come from the German state of Bavaria.

The rest of the group were reportedly safe and accounted for.

However, others were not so lucky, with rescue workers trying to save lives as authorities expected more rainfall following summer with soaring temperatures in Central and Eastern Europe.

In Romania, flooding affected eight counties, the country’s emergency unit said, and its Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu visited hard-hit Galati county, where four people were reportedly found dead, about 5,000 homes were damaged, and 25,000 were without power.

Footage monitored by Worthy News showed streets flooded with muddy water, silt, and debris as rescuers led residents to safety. “The priority is obviously to save lives. At this moment, we have all the necessary logistics to intervene quickly,” Ciolacu stressed.

Elsewhere, residents of several towns along the Czech-Polish border were evacuated as rivers rose past alert levels. “We are facing a critical night, full mobilization is required,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on social media platform X.

ANTI-FLOOD MEASURES

Authorities announced that the Czech capital, Prague, which also suffered catastrophic floods in 2002, had implemented preventative anti-flood measures.

In the Czech Republic, northern and
Czech media said that northeastern areas bore the brunt of the deluge, and 51,000 households had their electricity supply cut off.

Forecasters warned that some parts of the country could see more than a third of the average annual rainfall by Sunday, and Environment Minister Petr Hladik urged people in the worst-hit areas to prepare to leave their homes.

In the village of Visnova, 140 kilometers (87 miles) north of Prague, resident Roman Christof told media his cottage had escaped damage because it was built on higher land.

He added that others were less fortunate. “I feel sorry for the neighbors,” he said while surveying the floodwaters.

Flood barriers were installed in Prague, a city of more than 1.3 million people, on the banks of the Vltava River, spanned by the picturesque 14th-century Charles Bridge.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES

The city heavily invested in preventive measures after the 2002 floods, which swept into the subway system and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Prague Zoo, located along the Vltava, was closed to visitors, and Czech Railways said services on dozens of routes were disrupted. As a precaution, a hospital evacuated patients in Brno, the country’s second-biggest city.

In Glucholazy, a historic town in southwestern Poland near the Czech border, firefighters piled hundreds of sandbags alongside a swollen river and evacuated some residents.

Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said weather forecasts looked unfavorable, with very heavy rainfall to fall around the Czech border area over the next 24 hours, feeding rivers into Poland.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer summarized expressed feelings in numerous impacted nations, saying: “The coming days will still be extremely difficult and challenging for the affected population and the emergency services.”

He noted that several federal states in his alpine nation were affected, and the situation was deteriorating, particularly in the northeastern state of Lower Austria. As in several other countries, Austria’s emergency services worked with district governors and municipalities to prepare for evacuations.

Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.

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