At least eight people have died and tens of thousands are without power as days of heavy rain and gale force winds cause havoc across central Europe.
Rescue workers from Poland and the Czech Republic, through Austria and into Romania worked around the clock over the weekend to rescue people from flash floods.
Lower Austria, the state surrounding Vienna, was declared a disaster area as flood waters continued to rise on Sunday, endangering a power station reservoir. Authorities reported record rainfall of up to 200 litres per sq m – an entire bathtub.
“People here have never experienced anything as difficult as this, the hardest time in their lives,” said Ms Johanna Michl-Leitner, Lower Austrian governor, on ORF public television. “We will do everything we can to hold back the water and protect the country and its people.”
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Some 20,000 rescue service crew have been working round the clock in the region since Thursday.
One Austrian fireman was reported dead while pumping water from a house cellar. In the Austrian capital, the Wien river turned into a torrent and water flooded into cellars. The underground and suburban rail systems were partially flooded, leading to suspension and curtailment of services.
Slovakia’s neighbouring capital Bratislava declared a state of emergency amid ongoing heavy rainfall while in neighbouring Hungary, the waters of the river Danube rose on Sunday to near 8.5m, closing in on record levels of 8.9m last seen in 2013.
“One of the biggest floods of recent years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” said Gergely Karacsony, mayor of the Hungarian capital.
At least four people died in eight counties in eastern Romania and thousands of people were evacuated from flooded homes.
Prime minister Marcel Ciolacu visited the hardest-hit Galati county where the four people inspected damaged homes and spoke with around 25,000 people without power on Sunday.
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said: “We are again facing the effects of climate change, increasingly present on the European Continent, with dramatic consequences.”
Echoing leaders in neighbouring countries, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk described as “very dramatic” as he visited the hard-hit southwestern Klodzko region near the Czech border.
Local authorities have called in the army to evacuate thousands of people where at least one person has died. Water levels rose there to 6.7 metres on Sunday, three times the local alarm level and above a previous flood record in 1997.
Since Thursday, more rain has fallen in Poland than the so-called millennium flood in 1997. To counter disrupted communications, Polish authorities have deployed Starlink terminals, offering internet via satellite of Elon Musks’s SpaceX company.
“The first Starlinks are already operational, supporting connectivity and communication in flood-affected areas,” said Mr Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland’s digital affairs minister. “We are working to launching several dozen more devices to ensure communication between [rescue] services and the civilian population.”
On Sunday in Krakow the Vistula, Poland’s longest river, broke its banks after reaching 372cm and continues to rise.
Some 250,000 people were without power in the Czech Republic, with eastern regions on the Polish border worst hit. As well as floods, heavy rain caused soil to sag around electricity transmission cables while galeforce winds saw trees rip down power lines.
Similar to neighbouring Austria and Poland, the extreme weather caused huge rail disruption with at least 40 Czech railway lines closed entirely.
Czech prime minister Petr Fiala appealed to citizens to avoid unnecessary journeys and head evacuation warnings of emergency services.
People who refused to leave their homes, he told public television, “are not only endangering themselves, but also those people who then have to try to save them when it becomes dramatic”.
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