Several people die as storm lashes European countries

One person has drowned in Poland and an Austrian firefighter has died responding to floods, authorities said yesterday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains.

Since Thursday, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually fierce rainfall. The storm had already caused the death of four people in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across the continent.

“We have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region” on the Polish-Czech border, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday morning.

Photo: AFP

Tusk was traveling through the southwest of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.

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

Separately, a firefighter in northeastern Austria died in floods in the Lower Austria region, which has been classified as a natural disaster zone.

“Unfortunately, a firefighter has died while responding to the flooding,” Lower Austria Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner told reporters yesterday.

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

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

In the nearby village of Glucholazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched with fear as the fast-flowing waters of the swollen Biala river surged past.

“Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” said Owsiaka, 65.

In the Czech Republic, police reported that four people were missing yesterday.

Three were in a car that was swept into a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne, and another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the southeast.

A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.

On Saturday, four people died in floods in southeastern Romania, with the bodies found in the worst-affected region, Galati in the southeast, where 5,000 homes were damaged.

“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 Romania, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube River.