Storm Boris killed four people in Romania on Saturday, while exceptional rains caused 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 worst-hit region, Galati (southeast), where 5,000 homes have been affected.
“Due to heavy rainfall, floods occurred” and in total across the country, 19 localities and hundreds of people were rescued, they said.
– “Dramatic consequences” –
In one of their videos, we can see several dozen houses under water in a village on the Danube.
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 “catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude”.
“We had floods eleven years ago, but it was not this bad,” he added.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is expected in the region and President Klaus Iohannis, in a statement, “extended his condolences to the bereaved families.”
“We are once again faced with the effects of climate change, increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” said the head of state. “We must continue to strengthen the capacity to anticipate extreme weather events, to alert the population.”
– Sandbags –
In the Czech Republic, 100,000 firefighters are on call and nearly 2,900 incidents were recorded on Friday, mainly falling trees and floods.
Nearly 50,000 homes were without electricity on Saturday, the electricity company CEZ said.
A hospital in the southeastern city of Brno was evacuated on Saturday morning. The northeastern region of Moravia has declared a state of emergency.
“The soil is now saturated, which means that all rainwater will remain on the surface,” Environment Minister Petr Hladik told X.
In the eastern city of Olomouc, Robert Hubinak went to collect sandbags to protect his house.
“I have brought back about three tonnes of sand since yesterday. Sixty or maybe 80 bags,” he explained to AFP, while sand is being offered free of charge to threatened residents.
A state of emergency has also been declared in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
On the Polish side, the situation seems most precarious in the southwest, according to the government, and the next few hours will be the most difficult.
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.
– Snow in September –
In Austria, winds of up to 146 kilometres per hour were recorded in the south of the country and precipitation of up to 170 litres of water per square metre in the north.
In the capital Vienna, firefighters have intervened around 150 times in the past 24 hours to clear debris from streets or pump out water from cellars, according to local media.
The wooded area of Schönbrunn Park, Austria’s most visited site, has been closed as a security measure, emergency services told APA.
While the “peak has not yet been reached” according to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, in the Styria region, 4,000 homes are without electricity.
In the mountainous areas of the west, snow is hampering traffic on several roads and rescue services are searching for a man missing after an avalanche.
Tyrol is covered in a layer of snow of up to one metre in places, an exceptional situation in mid-September, when temperatures above 30 degrees were recorded last week.
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