Floods claim two more victims as torrential rain hits Central Europe

By David W. Cerny and Marek Strzelecki

LIPOVA LAZNE, Czech Republic (Reuters) – One person drowned in southwestern Poland and thousands were evacuated across the border in the Czech Republic after heavy rain continued to lash central Europe on Sunday, causing flooding in several parts of the region.

A firefighter fighting floods in Lower Austria also died, Austrian Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said on Sunday on the social platform X, as authorities declared the state around Vienna a disaster area.

Rivers overflowed their banks from Poland to Romania, where four people were found dead on Saturday after days of torrential rain in a low-pressure system called Boris.

Parts of the Czech Republic and Poland were hit by the worst floods in nearly three decades, and a bridge collapsed in the historic Polish town of Glucholazy, near the Czech border.

In the Czech Republic, a quarter of a million households were without power due to strong winds and rain. Czech police said they were searching for three people who were in a car that plunged into the Staric river near Lipova Lazne, 235 kilometers east of Prague, on Saturday.

In Poland, one person died in Kłodzko County, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk said was the worst-affected region in the country, from which 1,600 people were evacuated.

“The situation is very dramatic,” Tusk told reporters on Sunday after a meeting in the town of Klodzko, which was partially under water as the level of the local river rose to 665 centimeters on Sunday morning, well above the alert level of 240 centimeters.

This surpassed the record high level of severe flooding in 1997, when the city was partially damaged and 56 people died in Poland.

On Sunday morning, authorities ordered evacuations in Glucholazy, in the Nysa district of Poland, as the river burst its banks and the town was cut off from electricity. Firefighters and soldiers had been working since Saturday to protect the town’s infrastructure, but were unable to prevent the bridge from collapsing.

Local police announced that people trapped in flooded houses in Nysa County will be rescued by helicopter.

Residents across the Czech border also reported that the situation was worse than ever before during flooding.

“What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I can even go back there,” said Pavel Bily, a resident of Lipova Lazne.

The region’s fire department said it had evacuated 1,900 people by Sunday morning and that many roads were impassable.

In the worst-affected areas, more than 100 mm of rain fell overnight and around 450 mm since Wednesday evening, the Czech Meteorological Institute said.

Further rain is expected on Sunday and Monday.

In Budapest, authorities have raised their forecasts for the Danube to rise above 8.5 metres in the second half of this week, approaching the record of 8.91 metres set in 2013, as rain continues in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.

“According to forecasts, Budapest is facing one of the worst floods in recent years, but we are prepared to fight it,” said Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony.

In Romania, authorities said the rains were less heavy than on Saturday, when floods killed four people and damaged 5,000 homes. Towns and villages in seven counties in eastern Romania were affected, and the country’s emergency center said it was still looking for two missing people.

(Reporting by David W. Cerny in Lipvoa Lazne, Radovan Stoklasa in Liberec, Czech Republic, Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw, Jason Hovet in Prague, Krisztina Than in Budapest, Luiza Ilie in Bucharest and Maria Martinez in Berlin; Editing by Susan Fenton)