WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Soldiers and volunteers in southwestern Poland laid sandbags near swollen rivers in the Wroclaw region on Wednesday, trying to protect homes and businesses after days of flooding in Central Europe.
Several countries in Central Europe have been hit by serious flooding, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania as a result of a low-pressure area that dropped record amounts of rain in the region last Thursday.
Authorities have reported 23 deaths so far, seven in Poland and seven in Romania, five in Austria and four in the Czech Republic.
The combination of floods in Central Europe and deadly forest fires in portugal are joint evidence of a “climate crisis” That will become the norm unless drastic measures are taken, the European Union headquarters said on Wednesday.
The fourth death was reported in the Czech Republic on Wednesday after police found the body of a 70-year-old woman who had been swept away by water on Sunday in the town of Kobyla nad Vidnavkou, near the city of Jesenik in the hard-hit northeast.
The weather has improved, with warm and sunny conditions in the Czech Republic, Poland and elsewhere. In some places, water levels have dropped, allowing authorities and residents to clear debris.
Firefighters in Poland pumped water from flooded streets and basements. And in Romania, about 1,000 firefighters worked across the country to clear badly affected areas, the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations said in a Facebook post Wednesday.
But some areas, especially in southwestern Poland, still pose a threat.
Soldiers and residents of Marcinkowice, near Wroclaw, laid down sandbags at a bridge over the Olawa River. The river’s waters flow into the Oder, the largest river that rises in the Oder Mountains in the Czech Republic and flows through Poland to Germany.
Olawa community leader Artur Piotrowski described the situation as difficult, telling Poland’s state news agency PAP that two villages in a low-lying area had been flooded since Monday and residents were refusing to evacuate.
Thousands of Polish soldiers were in action. Some evacuated people and animals — including dogs and horses — from flood-hit areas and distributed food and drinking water. The army also posted on X on Wednesday that it had set up a field hospital in the town of Nysa after patients at a hospital there had to be evacuated earlier in the week.
Experts are preparing for the risk of flooding due to the overflow of the Oder River in Opole, a city of about 130,000 people, and Wroclaw, with about 640,000 people, which was hit by disastrous floods in 1997.
