Storm Boris has caused at least 15 deaths in its passage through Central Europe, from Austria to Romania. The storm has caused several rivers to burst their banks, flooded dozens of villages, forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, and forced the closure of factories and warehouses in several countries on the continent. These are the worst floods in at least two decades. Among the most affected countries are Romania, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Central and local authorities in several countries in the centre of the continent are preparing for a new rise in water.
In Romania, floods have killed at least six people over the weekend. An Austrian firefighter died on Sunday. In Austria, two men aged 70 and 80 were found drowned in their homes, a police spokesman said on Monday. In Poland, the state news agency PAP reported five deaths. In the Czech Republic, one person has drowned in the Krasovka river in the northwest of the country, while seven others remain missing, police chief Martin Vondrásek said on Monday.
Some authorities have begun to count the cost of the damage while others are preparing for further flooding. Border areas between the Czech Republic and Poland were severely affected over the weekend by heavy rains since last week and rising water levels, which washed away some bridges, forced evacuations and left a trail of destruction.
The Polish government is expected to declare a state of natural disaster on Monday. Michal Piszko, mayor of the Polish town of Klodzko on the Czech border, said the waters had receded but help was needed. “We need bottled water and dry provisions, because we have also set up a point for victims evacuated from flooded areas,” he told private broadcaster RMF FM. “Children will not go to school until the end of the week. At the moment, half the town has no electricity.” Poland’s education minister, Barbara Nowacka, said about 420 schools had been closed in four provinces. In the town of Nysa in southwestern Poland, a hospital had been evacuated.
In the Czech town of Jesenik, across the Polish border, where floodwaters swept through the town on Sunday, clean-up efforts began after the waters receded to reveal damaged cars and debris piled up in the streets.
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In eastern Romania, where towns and cities were submerged over the weekend, Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, told Digi24 television that the floods had had a devastating impact. “If you were here you would instantly cry because people are desperate, their life’s work has disappeared, there were people left with only the clothes on their backs,” he said.
Cities on alert
As the overflowing waters of rivers in the Czech-Polish border area began to recede on Monday, flooding was spreading, putting larger cities on alert. Jacek Sutryk, mayor of Wroclaw, said the city of about 600,000 people was preparing for the water level to peak on Wednesday. “This high wave will pass through Wroclaw for several days,” he said. The city still remembers the catastrophic flood in 1997 that plunged it into disaster for several days.
In the Czech Republic, the flooding of the Morava River put Litovel, a town 230 km east of the capital Prague with a population of almost 10,000, under around 70% of water overnight and closed schools and health facilities, its mayor said in a video on Facebook. Flooding in Ostrava, the regional capital in the north-east of the Czech Republic, forced the closure of a power station that supplied heating and hot water to the city, as well as two chemical plants. More than 12,000 people have been evacuated in the Czech Republic. A quarter of a million Czech households were left without electricity over the weekend, although that number had dropped to 118,000 on Monday, the CTK news agency reported.
Hungarian Interior Minister Sándor Pintér said the government in Budapest was fully prepared to act and that efforts were currently focused on keeping the Danube River and its tributaries within their banks. Pintér said up to 12,000 soldiers were ready to help if necessary.
The Slovak capital Bratislava and Hungary’s Budapest were also bracing for the Danube to rise. In Austria, river and reservoir levels dropped overnight as the rain eased, but authorities said they were bracing for a second wave as more intense rain was expected in the coming hours.
In addition to the fatalities, the economic damage is also significant and has yet to be quantified. Factories and warehouses across central Europe were forced to suspend their production lines on Monday. In Ostrava, an industrial city of 290,000 inhabitants in the north-east of the Czech Republic, the BorsodChem chemical plant has been closed, said a spokesman for the company, partly owned by the Chinese group Wanhua Chemical.
