European floods: Storm Boris causes ‘catastrophe’ in Romania and Poland, leaves five dead

Storm Boris brought record rains and flooding to parts of Central and Eastern Europe on Sunday, killing at least five people and forcing thousands to evacuate and leaving many stranded across Poland and Romania.

Heavy rain is expected to begin falling in central Europe on Friday and continue for several days as a slow-moving low pressure system arrives.

Storm Boris brought ferocious winds and a month’s worth of rain to large swaths of Poland, Romania, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary in just 24 hours.

Four bodies – three women and one man – were recovered in Romania, the worst-hit country, with flooding affecting 19 districts in eight counties.

Strong winds downed dozens of trees, damaged vehicles and blocked roads and traffic.

Romania’s southeastern Galati county was particularly hard hit, with at least 700 homes flooded and hundreds of people stranded, said Emil Dragomir, mayor of the village of Slobozija Konati in the county.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” Dragomir said.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis acknowledged on Saturday that the impacts of the climate crisis are growing and disruptive.

“We are once again facing the effects of climate change, which is becoming increasingly evident on the European continent and whose consequences are dramatic,” he said.

Officials said Saturday that rainfall in the past 24 hours was the highest in the last 100 years.

A Black Hawk helicopter was deployed to Galati to assist with search and rescue efforts.

Rivers overflowed in Poland and the Czech Republic, causing flooding in several areas.

One person drowned and 1,600 were evacuated in Kłodzko Voivodeship in southwestern Poland, where several municipalities were flooded after several days of heavy rains caused river levels to reach record highs.

“The situation is very serious, especially in Klocko county,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters on Sunday after meeting with a crisis management team in the town of Klocko.

In southern Poland, authorities ordered the evacuation of homes in the historic town of Grchowazy, near the Czech border, after water levels in the Biała Gryhorska river rose by 2 metres (6.5 feet) between Saturday evening and overnight.

Poland’s Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told TVN24 that authorities had received hundreds of reports of incidents and would “focus in the coming hours on what the threat is.”

In Poland’s second-largest city, Krakow, sandbags were distributed to residents to protect their homes from flooding.

In the Czech Republic, more than 100,000 firefighters were deployed after authorities received some 2,900 reports of incidents related to fallen trees and flooding on Friday.

Around 260,000 homes across the country were without power on Sunday morning, and traffic was cut off on many roads, including the main highway D1.

Up to 10,000 people in the Czech city of Opava, of which there are about 56,000, have been asked to leave their homes for higher ground, as rescuers used boats to transport residents to safety from neighbourhoods flooded by the raging Opava river.

“There is no reason to wait,” Mayor Tomas Navratil told Czech public radio, saying the situation was worse than during the devastating 1997 floods known as the “Flood of the Century.”

Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the focus was on saving lives and that the government would meet on Monday to assess the damage.

Footage released by the Czech Republic’s Fire and Rescue Service showed a flooded road in the southern city of Benešové nad Černow, where two women were rescued by boat after ignoring orders to evacuate.

Neighbouring Slovakia declared a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava, while heavy rains in Austria caused rivers to overflow.

Some southern and eastern German states have also been hit by floods, with river warnings in place in Saxony.