BALKANS: More than 10,000 people along the Danube prepared for evacuation last night as heavy rain hampered efforts to bolster flood defences and tributaries feeding Europe's second-longest river rose to heights not seen for a century.
And as hundreds of mostly poor communities across the Balkans salvaged what they could from the deluge, an international agency that monitors the Danube said it hoped to have an advanced flood warning system in place by the end of the year.
"We will be forced to evacuate all 10,000 villagers in the region, because the wind is blowing so hard and the sky is very cloudy, so we will have more problems," said Constantin Raicea, mayor of the southern Romanian village of Bistret.
Interior minister Vasile Blaga added: "I don't want to create panic but there are dykes that might give in at any moment because of the rise in the Danube and strong gusts of wind."
Hundreds more Romanians abandoned their homes in the towns of Braila, Calarasi and Galati, amid controlled explosions to reroute the river from populated areas and desperate efforts to reinforce dykes by teams of soldiers, police and volunteers.
The cost of damage to buildings, farmland and infrastructure in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria may approach €1 billion, and disruption to commercial traffic on the Danube and the spring planting of crops will strain cash-strapped Balkan economies.
In Bulgaria, emergency teams reinforced sandbag defences on long stretches of the river, which forms most of the country's northern border with Romania.
Army units were taking food and fresh water to swamped villages and half the town of Nikopol was still submerged.
Bulgaria's opposition tried to unseat the government yesterday, complaining that it had failed to cope with the Danube crisis and had misspent relief funds intended to help recovery from last year's devastating floods, but the ruling coalition comfortably survived a no-confidence vote.
While the Danube has stopped rising in Serbia, officials fear a second flood wave after the Tisza river in neighbouring Hungary rose past 10m in some places.
Officials have said the Tisza threatens more than 150,000 people living along its banks in southern Hungary, and an 18,000-strong emergency team is trying to contain it there as workers downstream in Serbia prepare for the arrival of another surge of high water.
Experts say heavy late winter snow in the Alps and Carpathian mountains thawed rapidly and surged into central European rivers that were already engorged by spring rain, and which were surrounded by land still saturated after last year's floods.
"There was a general awareness in the countries affected that there would be problems, but the magnitude has caught everyone unawares," said Peter Weller, executive secretary of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River.
He said the Vienna-based organisation, founded in 1994 by states in the Danube area, had devised an early warning system that would detect flood danger from key factors including regional rainfall, snowmelt and ground water levels.
It could give more advanced warning than existing national systems, many of which rely on the rise of river levels in neighbouring countries to trigger an alert.
"The system is being developed with EU funding, and a prototype could be in place by the end of the year," Mr Weller told The Irish Times.
"It would complement national systems, some of which are very good but give less warning than this one. Floods are a natural process and will still happen, but this would give an extra degree of warning." Danube states signed up to a plan in 2004 to help prevent destructive flooding along its banks, but many have failed to implement its measures, including the restoration of flood plains by the river where excess water could escape without endangering lives and property.
"Flood plains have been systematically and continuously built upon for the last century," said Mr Weller. "Clearing flood plains is a preventative measure that may seem costly, but it is far less expensive than repairing flood damage that can run into billions of euros."