The death toll from severe flooding in Central and Eastern Europe rose to 16 on Monday, with more heavy rainfall expected.
More than a dozen victims have now been reported in Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania in the floods that ravaged the region over the weekend, with the death toll expected to rise.
In large parts of the vast disaster area, kilometres of land are still under water. Roads and fields are flooded, cellars and houses are full of water and dams and dikes are overflowing.
In Poland, authorities reported Monday afternoon that three men and one woman had died in separate incidents in affected regions, bringing the total death toll in the country to five.
Latest developments included the mayor of the small southwestern town of Paczków ordering a forced evacuation after a crack appeared in the wall of a nearby reservoir.
Mayor Artur Rolka warned in an appeal on social media that “no one can guarantee that the damage will not increase”. On Polish television, he said he had decided on a forced evacuation after residents did not heed his calls to leave their homes voluntarily.
He urged all remaining residents to leave low-lying districts as they could soon be inundated by flooding after days of historic rainfall.
Nysa, another town in the Opole region with more than 40,000 inhabitants, was also immediately evacuated. Dramatic scenes took place on Sunday when 33 patients were rescued from the local hospital in rubber dinghies.
On Monday, the situation in Nysa appeared to be under control, but later sirens sounded in the city and television images showed long lines of cars on the bridges after the mayor warned that the dike could break and the city could flood.
“The situation is very dangerous, the health and lives of residents are at risk,” the city said in a statement.
Following an emergency cabinet meeting in the western city of Wrocław on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced 1 billion zloty ($260 million) in aid to flood victims.
Tusk said he would talk to his counterparts in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia about jointly applying for European Union financial support for reconstruction.
The prime minister said flood victims can apply for financial assistance from local authorities with immediate effect.
Tusk also responded to reports of looting in flooded areas and vowed to take strict action against perpetrators who take advantage of the situation of flood victims.
Further downstream, Wrocław is preparing for high water later this week, Mayor Jacek Sutryk said on Monday morning.
There is 24-hour surveillance of the embankments and the canals and tributaries of the Oder River, which flows through the city, Sutryk said in a video posted on Facebook.
The mayor warned that flooding is currently expected in Wrocław on Wednesday. Earlier weather forecasts indicated that the city could avoid the worst weather conditions.
However, the flooding is not expected to be as bad as in 1997, when a third of the city was under water.
Three dead in Lower Austria
Among the latest victims in Austria are two elderly men who died in their homes in the flood-hit state of Lower Austria, which has been declared a disaster area by the national government.
The flood situation in the eastern region, which surrounds the capital Vienna and borders the Czech Republic, remains serious despite a brief decrease in rainfall overnight, Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner said on Monday.
“It’s not over yet, it remains critical, it remains dramatic,” Mikl-Leitner added.
Up to 80mm of rain was expected in the state on Monday, putting significant pressure on dams in the region.
In Lower Austria, more than 200 roads have been closed, 1,800 buildings have been evacuated and many students are staying at home, she said.
Currently, approximately 3,500 households are without electricity.
In Lower Austria, up to 370 millimeters of rain has fallen in recent days, several times more than the monthly average of precipitation. A firefighter lost his life last weekend while pumping out a cellar.
The situation could improve somewhat from Tuesday onwards, as the persistent rainfall is expected to end then.
One dead, seven missing in Czech ‘apocalypse’
The Czech Republic reported its first fatality from the floods on Monday, with seven people still missing.
According to Martin Vondrášek, head of the Czech police, a person has drowned in the small Krasová River in the eastern Moravia-Silesia region.
Three of the missing were reportedly trapped in a car that ended up in a raging river near the spa town of Jesenik, near the Polish border. There has been no sign of the vehicle so far.
The other missing persons are believed to have fallen into various bodies of water, including the Otava River. In addition, a man from a nursing home near the Polish border is missing.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala called the situation a once-in-a-century flood.
Last weekend, streets in towns such as Jesenik in the Altvater Mountains, Opava on the river of the same name and Krnov on the border with Poland turned into raging torrents.
In Jesenik, emergency services rescued hundreds of people using boats and helicopters. The town’s mayor said on television: “It was an apocalypse, there is mud everywhere, everything is destroyed.”
The central square in the city centre was temporarily transformed into a mass of water, with cars on it. Several houses in the area collapsed, while authorities reported a risk of landslides after the floodwaters receded.
Entire streets were flooded along the Morava River in Litovel, the CTK news agency reported. Authorities in the small town of nearly 10,000 people appealed to the public to alert emergency services.
Water levels continued to rise in many other places. Evacuation orders were extended in Ostrava, the Czech Republic’s third-largest city, after dikes were breached. A state of danger was declared for the area around the northern Bohemian town of Frýdlant.
Victims in Romania as Orbán cancels commitments
Other countries have also been hit by the historic storm front. For example, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán announced on the social media platform X that he has postponed all “international obligations” due to “extreme weather conditions and the ongoing flooding in Hungary.”
As Germany braces for flooding from overflowing rivers in border areas, the government in Berlin has pledged support to countries facing flooding should they ask for help.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the floods “worrying” and added: “We will help as much as we can.”
The worst-hit country so far is Romania, where at least seven people have died since the weekend due to heavy rainfall and severe flooding.
The regions of Galați, Vaslui and Iași in the east of the country were particularly hard hit, with around 300 people having to be evacuated and around 6,000 farms affected by the floods.
The water hit mostly remote villages, where people climbed onto roofs to avoid being swept away by the floods.
