• Many rivers overflow, suspending road traffic and railway lines
• War-ravaged Ukraine offers to send rescuers, specially equipped to deal with floods

GLUCHOLAZY: One person has drowned in Poland and an Austrian fireman has died responding to floods, authorities said on Sunday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains.

Since Thursday, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually heavy rainfall. The rains have flooded streets and submerged entire neighbourhoods in some places, while shutting down public transport and electricity in others.

Romanians waded through armpit-high water to safety, Poles sought shelter in schools and Czechs hurriedly put up sand dykes in an effort to keep the water at bay.

Sunday’s deaths bring the overall toll from the storm to seven, with thousands evacuated across the continent.

In Romania, a body was found on Sunday, after four people were reported killed earlier. Four people were reported missing in the Czech Republic.

“The water came into the house, it destroyed the walls, everything,” Sofia Basalic, 60, a resident of Romania’s village of Pechea, in the hard-hit region of Galati, said. “It took the chickens, the rabbits, everything. It took the oven, the washing machine, the refrigerator. I have nothing left,” she said.

‘Worst hours of their lives’

“Heartfelt solidarity with all affected by the devastating floods in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia”, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X, formerly Twitter, adding that the EU was ready to offer support.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “we have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region” on the Polish-Czech border in the southwest of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.

Around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters.

Separately, a fireman in northeastern Austria died in floods in the Lower Austria region, which has been classified as a natural disaster zone, regional governor Joha­nna Mikl-Leitner told reporters.

“For many residents, the upcoming hours will be the worst of their lives,” she said. Emergency services had made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in the state of Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes.

A highway from western Austria to Vienna was shut just outside the capital and four of Vienna’s five metro lines had been shut in the city, where the Wien river was threatening to overflow its banks, according to local news reports.

In Poland, authorities shut the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks on Saturday, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.

Tusk said that Ukraine, which is fending off a Russian invasion in its third year, has offered to send some 100 rescuers specially equip­ped to deal with floods to help as an expression of solidarity with Poland, which has steadfastly backed Kyiv during the war. “It’s very touching”, Tusk said of the offer.

In the Czech Republic, a dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream. In the village of Velke Hostice, residents put up a wall of sandbags 500 metres long in an effort to hold back the rising waters of the River Opava. “If we don’t stop the wave, it will flood the lower part of the village,” local hunter Jaroslav Lexa said.

‘Catastrophe of epic proportions’

In southeastern Romania, another body was found on Sunday in the worst-affected Galati region, where four people had died on Saturday. “We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis said.

Hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube river.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati, where he said 700 homes had been flooded. Romania’s interior minister said more than 5,000 households and 15,000 people were affected in the region.

Snow in September

In Austria, some areas of the Tyrol region were blanketed by up to a metre (three feet) of snow — an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) last week. Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early Sunday. In neighbouring Slovakia, a state of emergency has been declared in the capital Bratislava.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2024