Storm Boris left four dead on Saturday, September 14 in Romaniawhile exceptional rainfall causes flooding in several countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
Romanian rescue services announced that they had found the bodies of four people during a search operation in the Galati region (southeast), the most affected. “Due to heavy rains, flooding occurred” and affected 19 localities across the country, they said. Hundreds of people were rescued.
Seven hundred houses were flooded in the village of Slobozia Conachi, in the Galati region, according to its mayor, Emil Dragomir, interviewed by local television Digi24, a “disaster of extraordinary magnitude”. “We already had floods eleven years ago, but they were not as serious”he added.
The army has deployed ten rescue boats to reach residents trapped in Pechea, a particularly hard-hit village. Camps are being set up to house victims driven from their homes by rising waters.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is expected to be in the region and President Klaus Iohannis, in a statement, “expressed his condolences to the bereaved families”.
“Once again we are faced with the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences.said the head of state. We must continue to strengthen our ability to anticipate extreme weather events and alert the population. »
“Saturated soil”
In Czech RepublicPolice reported four people missing on Sunday: three in a car swept away by a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne and a man swept away by a swollen stream in the southeast.
The situation is particularly dire in the north-east of the country, where much of the city of Opava has been evacuated due to the overflow of the river of the same name. In the south, a dam has burst its banks and towns downstream have been flooded.
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The Moravian region (northeast) declared a state of emergency. “The ground is now saturated, which means that all the rainwater will stay on the surface.”Environment Minister Petr Hladik said in X.
In 1997, floods hit Moravia, killing fifty people and causing damage estimated at billions of dollars. In 2002, the west of the country was affected, killing seventeen people.
A state of emergency was also declared in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
In PolandThe floods have overflowed the embankments in the towns of Glucholazy and Ladek Zdroj in the south-west. In the Klodzko region, around 1,600 people have had to be evacuated. One person drowned in this region on the Polish-Czech border, said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday morning, who has been touring the south-west of the country, the worst hit by the floods, since Saturday.
The Polish-Czech border crossing at Golkowice was closed on Saturday after a river overflowed. The railway line between Prudnik and Nysa was closed to traffic, as were several roads in the region.
“The peak has not yet been reached” in Austria
In AustriaWinds of up to 146 kilometres per hour were recorded in the south of the country, and rainfall in the north reached 170 litres of water per square metre.
Rail traffic was disrupted overnight from Saturday to Sunday in parts of Austria and the Vienna metro was partially closed due to Storm Boris. “Due to flooding, rail traffic on the western line between Amstetten and St. Valentin (Lower Austria) has been interrupted since Sunday at 01:15.”the national railway company (ÖBB) announced in a press release on Sunday.
A replacement bus service has been in operation since 6 a.m. on Sunday on this busiest section of the country, which connects Vienna, the capital, with Germany. Melk station in the Wachau tourist region, home to a UNESCO World Heritage abbey, is not in service due to flooding. ÖBB does not expect any improvement before Monday evening.
In the capital, firefighters have been called out 150 times in the past 24 hours to clear arteries blocked by debris or pump out water from basements, according to local media. The wooded part of Schönbrunn Park, Austria’s most visited site, has been closed as a safety measure, emergency services told APA. Service has been partially interrupted until further notice on two metro lines near the Vienna River, which is in danger of overflowing, APA reported.
While the “The peak has not yet been reached,” According to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, 4,000 households in Styria are without electricity. In the western mountainous areas, snow is blocking traffic on several roads and emergency services are searching for a man missing after an avalanche.
In some areas, Tyrol is covered by a layer of snow up to one metre deep – an exceptional situation in mid-September, when temperatures of over 30 degrees were recorded last week.
