Ten thousand Romanians face evacuation today as rescue workers race to fix a broken dam on the Danube before the swelling river floods their low-lying villages.
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| A man carries a lamb in Bistret, 280 km southwest of Bucharest today. Ten thousand Romanians faced evacuation as rescue workers raced to fix a broken dam on the Danube before the swelling river could flood their low-lying villages. Pic: Reuters/Bogdan Cristel |
The Danube continued to rise in southeast Europe after reaching its highest level in more than a century over the weekend, fed by heavy rains and melting snow.
Thousands of hectares of farmland, as well as several ports and villages across the Balkans are already under water, and torrential rains are expected to start in Romania late today.
Romanian authorities said the situation was critical in the southern village of Bistret where villagers helped the army to carry sandbags in their horse-drawn carts to fix a breach in a nearby dam.
Rescue teams prepared to move 10,000 people from nine villages in the area, including Bistret, to hospitals and schools in higher-lying settlements if the dam-fixing failed.
The Danube receded slightly where it leaves Serbia to enter Romania, but water levels were on the rise further east as the flood wave travelled to Tulcea and Constanta counties where people hurried to reinforce dykes.
TV footage also showed that most of Galati port in the southeast of the country was underwater, with some 1,500 workers and volunteers trying to build a seven-kilometre barrier to protect residential areas.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated in Romania overnight, mostly in southern Dolj county, taking the total up to more than 4,700. Around 600 houses were flooded and 170 destroyed.
More than 31,000 hectares in southern Romania, a fertile region for wheat and maize farming, are underwater, and officials said they would continue to submerge farmland to help protect populated areas in the east.