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Flooding from Austria to Romania has killed at least 17 people, with thousands evacuated after days of torrential rain caused rivers to overflow their banks.
Downpours from low-pressure system Storm Boris led to some of the most serious flooding in almost three decades across Central and Eastern Europe.
Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have all been experiencing extreme rainfall. A state of emergency has been declared by the Polish government, reported CNN.
According to Polish news agency PAP, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has secured $260 million in emergency funding for the country’s hardest hit regions.
The electricity and hot water were cut off for thousands in the Czech Republic when authorities closed heating plants due to the floods. Near the country’s border with Poland, 280,000 residents in Ostrava were left with no hot water, CNN Prima said.
“Please evacuate your belongings, yourselves, your loved ones. It is worth getting to the top floor of the building immediately, because the wave may be several metres high. This means that the whole town will be flooded,” wrote Kordian Kolbiarz, the mayor of Nysa, a Polish town of 44,000, as BBC News reported.
Seven people have died in Romania in the past few days. On Sunday, a firefighter was killed in Austria and on Monday two men died when they became trapped inside their homes, Lower Austria’s state government told CNN.
According to local police, three people were killed by the storms in the Czech Republic, while floods in Poland took the lives of four others.
“We are still under immense pressure, as the situation remains highly critical,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner, governor of Lower Austria, said at a press conference, as reported by CNN. Mikl-Leitner said the region is “still in a state of crisis.”
Global heating has been fueling extreme weather events in Europe, the fastest-warming continent in the world.
The deadly and damaging floods reminded some of another series of disastrous flooding in the region during the summer of 1997, when more than 100 people were killed and thousands were driven from their homes, The New York Times reported.
“This was a very traumatic one for Poland — the one that is remembered,” said Hubert Rozyk, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Climate and Environment in Poland. “And in some places, the situation is even worse than in 1997.”
With the risk of more flooding later this week, Budapest said roads near the Danube River would be closed, reported BBC News.
With the river continuing to rise more than three feet every 24 hours, the mayor of Budapest offered a million sandbags to residents.
The Danube flooded the Old Town area of the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, with water levels rising to higher than 30 feet, local media said.
Hungary is also expecting more flooding, with flood warnings along 310 miles of the river.
But the highest total rainfall amounts have been in the Czech Republic. Jesenik, a town in the northeast, has seen 19 inches of rain since Thursday morning. That’s five times the average for a month.
More rain has fallen in Austria’s St. Polten than in the wettest autumn ever recorded, in 1950.
“If you were here, you would cry instantly, because people are desperate, their whole lives’ work is gone, there were people who were left with just the clothes they had on,” said Mayor of Slobozia, România, Emil Dragomir, as BBC News reported.
More rain is forecast through Monday and Tuesday in the Czech Republic, Austria and southeast Germany, which could get an additional nearly four inches.
The weather is predicted to dry out by midweek in central Europe, though it could take days for floodwaters to subside.
Storm Boris will then move south into Italy, where it is forecast to intensify again, bringing more heavy rain, particularly to the Emilia-Romagna region.
While atmospheric pressure caused Storm Boris to crawl across the continent, a number of factors contributed to Central Europe’s record rainfall, including climate change.
When the atmosphere is warmer, it holds more moisture, scientists say, which leads to more intense rain. Warming oceans also cause more evaporation, feeding storm systems.
For every one degree Celsius increase in the global average temperature, Earth’s atmosphere can hold roughly roughly seven percent more moisture.
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