Death toll rises as Storm Boris lashes central, eastern Europe

WARSAW - One person drowned in Poland and an Austrian fireman died responding to floods, the authorities said on Sept 15, as

Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe

with torrential rain.

Since Sept 12, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually heavy rainfall.

The rain has flooded streets and submerged entire neighbourhoods in some places while shutting down public transport and electricity in others.

Romanians waded through armpit-high water to safety; Poles sought shelter in schools; and Czechs hurriedly put up sand dykes to keep the water at bay.

The deaths on Sept 15 bring the overall toll from the storm to eight, with thousands evacuated across the continent.

In Romania, two bodies were found on Sept 15, after four people were reported killed earlier, and one person was declared missing.

Four people were reported missing in the Czech Republic.

“The water came into the house, it destroyed the walls, everything,” Ms Sofia Basalic, 60, a resident of Romania’s village of Pechea, in the hard-hit county of Galati, told AFP.

“It took the chickens, the rabbits, everything. It took the oven, the washing machine, the refrigerator. I have nothing left,” she said.

‘Worst hours of their lives’

“Heartfelt solidarity with all affected by the devastating floods in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia”, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X, formerly Twitter, adding that the European Union was ready to offer support.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on the morning of Sept 15 that “we have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region” on the Polish-Czech border in the south-west of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.

Around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko and the Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters.

Separately, a fireman in north-eastern Austria died in floods in the Lower Austria region, which has been classified as a natural disaster zone, regional governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner told reporters on Sept 15.

“For many residents, the upcoming hours will be the worst of their lives,” she said.

Emergency services had made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in the state of Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes.

A highway from western Austria to Vienna was shut just outside the capital and four of Vienna’s five metro lines had been shut in the city, where the Wien river was threatening to overflow its banks, according to local news reports.

In Poland, the authorities shut the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks on Sept 15, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.

Mr Tusk said that Ukraine, which is fending off a Russian invasion in its third year, has offered to send some 100 rescuers specially equipped to deal with floods to help as an expression of solidarity with Poland, which has steadfastly backed Kyiv during the war.

“It’s very touching”, Mr Tusk said of the offer.

In the Czech Republic, a dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.

In the village of Velke Hostice, residents put up a wall of sandbags 500m-long to hold back the rising water of the River Opava.

“If we don’t stop the wave, it will flood the lower part of the village,” local hunter Jaroslav Lexa told AFP.

‘Catastrophe of epic proportions’

In south-eastern Romania, another body was found on Sept 15 in the worst-affected Galati region, where four people had died on Sept 14.

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said.

Hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube River.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Mr Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati, where he said 700 homes had been flooded.

Romania said more than 6,000 households and 15,000 people were affected in the region.

Snow in September

In Austria, some areas of the Tyrol region were blanketed by up to a metre of snow – an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30 deg C last week.

Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early on Sept 15.

In neighbouring Slovakia, a state of emergency has been declared in the capital Bratislava.

Meanwhie, heavy rain is expected to continue until at least Sept 16 in the Czech Republic and Poland. AFP