Poland reports one death as storm affects Eastern and Central Europe
Storm Boris has caused torrential rains and flooding in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.Four deaths have been reported in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated.Parts of northeast Austria have been declared a natural disaster area.
Authorities reported on Sunday that one person drowned in Poland and four others are missing in the Czech Republic as Storm Boris brought torrential rains and flooding to central and Eastern Europe. Since Thursday, high winds and unusually fierce rains have battered large areas of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.
The storm has already caused four deaths in Romania, and thousands across the continent have been evacuated from their homes. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Sunday morning, “We have confirmed the first death by drowning in the Klodzko region,” located on the Polish-Czech border.
Tusk was traveling through the southwest of the country, the area hardest hit by the floods. Authorities have evacuated around 1,600 people in Klodzko and have called in the army to support firefighters at the scene.
On Saturday, Polish authorities closed the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river overflowed, shutting several roads and halting trains on the Prudnik-Nysa line. In the nearby village of Glucholazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched anxiously as the swollen Biala River’s fast-flowing waters surged past.
“Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” Owsiaka, 65, told AFP.
In the Czech Republic, police reported four people missing on Sunday. Three individuals were in a car swept into a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne, while another man went missing after floods swept him away in the southeast. A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.
On Saturday, floods in southeastern Romania killed four people, with their bodies found in Galati, the worst-affected region in the southeast. The floods damaged 5,000 homes in the area.
“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.
Emergency services reported that hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 regions of the country and released a video showing 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.
Authorities have declared parts of northeast Austria a natural disaster area. Some areas of Tyrol received up to a meter (three feet) of snow—a rare occurrence for mid-September, which saw temperatures reaching up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) last week.
Early Sunday, rail services in eastern Austria were suspended, and several metro lines in Vienna were shut down as the Wien River threatened to overflow its banks, according to the APA news agency. Emergency services conducted nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes.
Since Friday, firefighters in Vienna have responded approximately 150 times to clear roads blocked by storm debris and pump water from cellars, local media reported. Neighboring Slovakia has declared a state of emergency in its capital, Bratislava. The Czech Republic and Poland are expected to experience heavy rains until at least Monday.
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 13:04:00
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