In Austria, sandbags are being prepared, in the Czech Republic, reservoirs have been emptied and in Poland, flooding is expected. Weather experts warn of days of “potentially catastrophic” rainfall.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said there is “no reason to panic” after attending a briefing on flood risks in Wroclaw amid forecasts of 15cm (6 inches) of rainfall in four southern provinces.
In Austria, Heavy rain and snowfall in the mountains have already led to traffic disruptions. Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said the army is ready to deploy up to 1,000 soldiers if necessary.
The Czech The capital is not taking any risks after the floods that devastated the city twenty years ago.
Images from 2002 of flooded metro stations, residents being evacuated in rubber boats and elephants drowning in Prague Zoo are etched in the memories of locals.
Shortly before 10:00 a.m. (08:00 GMT) on Friday, two heavy steel locks, one meter thick, closed the so-called Devil’s Canal. Certovkaa stretch of water that flows through Prague’s historic Mala Strana district before flowing back into the Vltava River.
The Certovka locks are part of a nationwide network of flood defences that officials say cost more than €1bn (£845m) to build to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic damage that occurred in 1997 and 2002.
Prague hopes to escape the worst of the flooding. Attention this weekend is focused on the central and eastern parts of the country, especially North Moravia, where 50 people died in 1997.
The Jeseniky Mountains could receive up to 400mm of water over the next three days, which will then flow down the Oder River (Odra (in Czech) and on towards Poland, passing a number of towns and villages along the way.
After attending an emergency services briefing in southwestern Poland, Donald Tusk sought to reassure the public by saying that the weather forecasts were “not too alarming” and that there was no reason to predict anything that could pose a threat to the entire country.
Poland The territorial army was on standby, he said, and in one of the four southern provinces, Lesser PolandAn estimated two million sandbags were stockpiled, with another million available in Lower Silesia, the province around Wroclaw.
“If there is one thing to expect, and we want to be prepared for it, it is of course local flooding or so-called flash flooding,” he added.
The Polish Institute of Meteorology and Water Management later extended the highest warning level from the four southern provinces to the mouth of the Oder River in Szczecin, where it flows into the Baltic Sea.
Austria has experienced the warmest August on record since measurements began, according to the Austrian Federal Institute Geosphere.
Now it warns of 10-20 cm of rainfall in many regions in a matter of days. In some places more than 20 cm is possible, especially in the mountains of Upper and Lower Austria and in the north of Upper Styria.
According to the Austrian storm warning center UWZ, the previous records for the entire month of September will be “broken within a few days” in some areas.
Manuel Kelemen, meteorologist at Puls24 TV, says from a meteorological point of view: “What we are experiencing is extraordinary, if not unprecedented.”
Rail network OEBB has advised all passengers to postpone non-urgent travel. A section of the Tauern railway line between Bad Hofgastein and Böckstein in the province of Salzburg is closed due to heavy snowfall.
Flooding and landslides are possible, with gale-force winds expected in the capital Vienna. Aid agency Caritas has called for volunteers to help in the affected areas.
Continued heavy rainfall is also expected across the border in the German state Bavaria.
Obviously, this is a regional, not a national, emergency, with much of Central Europe affected.
But a reminder of national priorities came earlier this week when Czech officials said they had been forced to reject a German request to stop discharging reservoirs into the Vltava River, which flows into the Elbe River (Label in Czech) and further to Germany, after the collapse of a bridge in Dresden.
These reservoirs – a series of nine dams known as the Vltava waterfall – need to be half empty to be able to process what this weekend has in store.
