Europe’s deadliest floodwaters are sweeping toward ancient Wroclaw in Poland

As the number of people killed in three days of terrible floods across central Europe climbed to 21, Poland’s ancient city of Wroclaw prepared buses for potential evacuations on Tuesday and the zoo asked for volunteers to shield animals from rising water.

The Danube was rising in Hungary, rivers were still overflowing their banks in the Czech Republic, and flooding had already engulfed portions of Austria and Romania.

The border regions between Poland and Czechia are among the most affected since the weekend, with rushing rivers full of debris demolishing buildings and historic towns, as well as bridges.

Seven people have died from flooding in Romania, where the floods have subsided since the weekend; six more have died in Poland; five more in Austria; and three more in the Czech Republic. There was still no fresh water or electricity in tens of thousands of homes in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Wroclaw got ready for the Oder River’s peak water level.

“In the event that an evacuation is necessary, we have buses available,” Wroclaw Mayor Jacek Sutryk stated during a crisis meeting. “Today we will also be reinforcing further embankments, also in the Odra (Oder) river basin.”

Employees and volunteers started moving some of the 450,000 books from the city’s major church archive to higher levels of the Archdiocesan Archives building. The zoo also asked for assistance packing sandbags to safeguard animal habitats.

The goal of filling 80% of a massive reservoir close to the Czech border is to lower water levels and avoid flood peaks falling on the Oder and Nysa, as was the case during the catastrophic floods that struck Wroclaw in 1997.

Combat Conditions

Volunteers worked through the night to assist rescue crews in heaving sandbags to reinforce the damaged embankment surrounding Nysa, a city in southwest Poland home to over 40,000 residents.
The Nysa embankment has been secured, according to national fire chief Mariusz Feltynowski, who announced this on Tuesday. Military helicopters have joined the operation to deliver sandbags.

Despite Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s promises that authorities would fight “ruthlessly” against looters, some locals went back to make sure their homes were safe on Monday after being evacuated.

“They promised to take good care of our property and possessions. However, we are terrified as we have already heard that looters have started acting up,” 45-year-old Nysa resident Sabina Jakubowska told Reuters.

Governor Josef Belica of the neighboring Czech Republic reported that 15,000 people had been evacuated from one of two severely impacted regions in northeastern Moravia-Silesia. Relief was being transported by helicopters to communities inundated by floodwaters.

The director of an elderly care facility in the regional center of Ostrava, Michal Marianek, told Reuters that for two nights, pensioners were transported to a higher floor and given without electricity.

He stated that inhabitants were being transported to different residences. “In those combat conditions we managed, provisional menus and so on,” he said.

Flooding in central Europe caused losses that were estimated by credit rating firm Morningstar DBRS to range from several hundred million euros to over one billion euros ($1.1 billion).

However, Belica claimed that the harm in his area alone would amount to tens of billions of crowns, or more than $1 billion. The initial assessment of flood damage to insured property, according to the Czech Insurance Association, is 17 billion crowns ($753 million).

In Hungary, authorities have installed movable dams in the historic cities of Visegrad and Szentendre, which are situated north of Budapest, in anticipation of the Danube floods.

Budapest has closed Margaret Island, a recreational area featuring lodging and dining options, in anticipation of the water levels reaching almost record levels.

The Leitha river is predicted to reach its highest level ever recorded, and water management officials stated they were still debating whether to open an emergency reservoir to safeguard the town of Mosonmagyarovar in northwest Hungary, which is located on the Austrian border.

The Danube reached a peak of about ten meters over night, according to Slovakia’s Environment Minister Tomas Taraba, and the water level will now gradually decline. He claimed that an estimate of 20 million euros had been lost due to flooding around the nation.

 

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