The sky is now a pristine blue, but in the Czech town of Opava, all people are talking about is Storm Boris and the torrential rain that has been falling since Friday. And from the bridges in the city centre, people watch the river level rise.
In this town of nearly 50,000 people, located some 240 km east of Prague, the streets have been flooded since Boris left a trail of devastation in central Europe. The rain only stopped on Sunday morning.
Some braved the floods on foot, by bike, and one driver even tried to drive his Volkswagen, before turning around. Others, living on the upper floors, watch the streets from their windows. Trash cans and containers float, between bus stops and road signs.
On the bridges in the city centre, onlookers gathered to watch the Opava River gradually rise to the level of the banks. According to the weather forecast, it was expected to reach its highest point late on Sunday.
Police vans and fire trucks blocked roads leading to the Katerinky district, and thousands of its residents were ordered to leave the area on Saturday as floodwaters threatened.
Standing in front of a prefabricated building, Marie Lasak Blokesova, a purchasing manager, assesses the situation, recalling the devastating floods that hit the region in 1997.
At the time, the floods killed 50 people and caused damage worth three billion dollars, particularly in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.
This time, “as we all expected, I hope everyone will be as well prepared as we are, and as we have already experienced the floods of 1997, now we are just waiting,” she said.
“Nowadays, with Facebook and Instagram, you can know what’s going on around you and so you can calm down a little bit.”
– “If we don’t stop the wave” –
Since Friday, more than 10,000 people have been evacuated in the Czech Republic. More than 250,000 homes were without electricity on Sunday and four people were missing.
The water is rising fast. Marie Lasak Blokesova talks about a parking lot where cars seemed safe at 9:30 a.m. and which was under water an hour later.
Twenty kilometres upstream, the town of Krnov was 80% flooded at 12:30 GMT, according to its deputy mayor Miroslav Binar.
So Mrs. Lasak Blokesova planned everything: “We stocked up on drinking water and prepared a camping gas stove, in case the gas and electricity were cut off, and we also recharged all our electrical appliances.”
In Velke Hostice, a village about five kilometres from Opava, volunteers are being mobilised to reinforce an improvised dike with sandbags on a 500-metre jetty built after the 1997 floods.
The fatigue is visible on the face of Jaroslav Lexa, a local hunter. He tells AFP that the men worked until 1am and resumed work at 7am on Sunday to patch the holes in the impressive structure.
“I look at this with horror,” he says. “If we don’t stop the wave, it will flood the lower part of the village.”
frj/cls/mm
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