The Romanian emergency services announced that they found the bodies of four people during a search operation in the most affected region, Galați (southeast), where 5,000 homes were affected. “Due to heavy rains, there were floods” and a total of 19 localities and hundreds of people were saved across the country, they said.
“Dramatic Consequences”
In one of their videos, we can see several dozen houses under water in a village along the Danube. Seven hundred houses were flooded in the village of Slobozia Conachi, in the Galaţi region, according to its mayor Emil Dragomir, interviewed by local television Digi24, a “disaster of extraordinary magnitude”.
“We already had floods eleven years ago, but it wasn't this bad,” he added. Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is expected in the region, and President Klaus Iohannis, in a statement, “expressed his condolences to the bereaved families”.
“We are once again facing 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 ability to anticipate extreme weather events and alert the population.”
sandbags
In the Czech Republic, 100,000 firefighters are available and almost 2,900 incidents were reported on Friday, mainly falling trees and flooding. Almost 50,000 homes were without electricity on Saturday, electricity company CEZ said.
A hospital in the southeastern city of Brno was evacuated on Saturday morning. The region of Moravia (northeast) has declared a state of emergency. “The ground is now saturated, which means that all the rainwater will remain on the surface,” Environment Minister Petr Hladik told X.
SERGEI GAPON / AFP
In the eastern city of Olomouc, Robert Hubinak went to get sandbags to protect his home. “We brought back about three tons of sand from yesterday. Sixty or maybe 80 bags,” he explained, as the sand is offered free of charge to threatened residents.
A state of emergency was also declared in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. On the Polish side, in the southwest the situation seems the most precarious, according to the government, and the next 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 kilometers per hour were recorded in the south of the country and precipitation of up to 170 liters of water per square meter in the north. In Vienna, the capital, firefighters have been called out about 150 times in the past 24 hours to clear debris-clogged arteries or pump water flooding into cellars, according to local media.
The wooded part of Schönbrunn Park, Austria's most visited site, was closed as a security measure, emergency services told APA. While “the peak has not yet been reached,” according to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, in the region of Styria, 4,000 homes are without electricity.