Floods in Central and Eastern Europe, four dead in Romania, Austria expects worsening situation

(Patria) - Four people died on Saturday in storm Boris in Romania, while heavy rains caused floods in several Central and Eastern European countries.

The Romanian rescue service announced that it found the bodies of four people in the Galati region in the southeast of the country, where 5,000 homes were affected.

Due to heavy rainfall, floods occurred, and a total of 19 towns and hundreds of people were rescued across the country, the rescue service announced.

The army sent ten rescue boats to reach residents trapped in the village of Pechei, which was particularly affected.

In the village of Slobozia Conachi, seven hundred houses were flooded, and Mayor Emil Dragomir told local television that it was a disaster of exceptional proportions".

Dragu Stefan (52), an employee of a nearby water supply company, told AFP that he tried to save something, but it was a futile effort because the water came too quickly.

President Klaus Iohannis expressed his condolences to the grieving families.

Floods associated with heavy rains are expected to increase in Central Europe, with the Earth's temperature being 1.5 degrees higher, climate experts from the IPCC said in a 2022 report.

In the Czech Republic on Saturday, 100,000 firefighters were on duty, and almost 50,000 homes were left without electricity, the power company CEZ announced.

A hospital in Brno in the southeast of the country was evacuated on Saturday morning. Moravia (northeast) declared a state of emergency.

The ground is now saturated, which means all rainwater will remain on the surface, Environment Minister Petr Hladik said on X.

A state of emergency has also been declared in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

On the Polish side, the situation in the southwest appears most precarious, and the government says the next few hours will also be difficult.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on everyone ordered to evacuate to leave their homes immediately and follow the instructions of the authorities.

- The low-pressure area that brought these heavy rains to Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, is not entirely predictable. Forecasts have changed in the last 48 hours, but, in general, they are not optimistic. During Sunday, we can probably expect even heavier rainfall, perhaps record-breaking in many areas. If we compare the amounts of precipitation, this is at the level of the major floods of 1997 and 2010. In some places, even more than in those crisis years, Tusk said.

In Austria, winds of up to 146 kilometers per hour were recorded in the south of the country, and rainfall of up to 170 liters of water per square meter in the north.

In Vienna, firefighters intervened about 150 times in the last 24 hours to clear drains clogged with debris or pump out water that had entered basements, local media report.

The wooded part of Schönbrunn Park, Austria's most visited site, has been closed for safety reasons, emergency services told APA agency. Cemeteries will remain closed on Sunday.

According to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the peak has not yet been reached, and part of the northeast of the country has been classified as a natural disaster zone.

In the mountains in the west of the country, snow is hindering traffic on several roads, and emergency services are searching for a man missing in an avalanche.

Tyrol is covered with a layer of snow up to one meter deep in places, which is an exceptional situation in mid-September, and temperatures above 30 degrees were recorded last week.