Hungary and Poland told their emergency services and citizens to remain vigilant as floodwaters from Storm Boris neared their peak in both countries and central European leaders said they would seek EU aid to fund recovery from a disaster that has claimed 24 lives and caused damage estimated at several billion euro.
“This period is the hardest part … it will last for about a week or eight days from today,” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday, as thousands of soldiers and volunteers reinforced embankments and stacked sandbags to prevent the Danube and smaller rivers inundating populated areas.
Roads beside the Danube are now submerged in central Budapest, where the floodwaters are expected to crest on Saturday before moving south through Hungary at a relatively slow pace that will test the strength of riverbanks and makeshift defences.
“Even after the water reaches its peak, we must stay vigilant… The slow decline presents a risk,” Mr Orban said. “The flood crest is forecast to exit the southern part of the country by mid-next week … by then, the riverbanks in Budapest should also be reopened.”
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The peak of the flood wave on the Oder river in Poland reached the country’s third-largest city, Wroclaw, on Thursday, without posing an immediate threat to defences that have been reinforced by thousands of soldiers, emergency workers and volunteers in recent days.
“It is too early to announce that the flood in Wroclaw has been overcome,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk told his crisis team during a meeting in the city on Thursday.
He cautioned against “unjustified feelings of euphoria and relief” and said he would “prefer us to hold tight and try to predict the trends [of water levels] as precisely as possible so we can keep the people of Wroclaw informed as accurately as we can”.
Mr Tusk said on Wednesday night that, even though key flood defences would probably not be breached, “there is always a question of whether there is a risk of embankment failure, as embankments have been under water pressure for a long time”.
Polish rivers would remain at very high levels for some 48 hours, so “embankments will be put under very serious pressure… And therefore all services must focus on their protection”, he added.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was expected to visit Wroclaw on Thursday evening to meet Mr Tusk and the leaders of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to discuss the impact of the floods.
Czech prime minister Petr Fiala said the floods were having a “devastating” affect on the region, and that in response “we will discuss the possibilities of European financial aid to the Czech Republic and other countries in central Europe”.
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