Five dead as Storm Boris brings flooding ‘catastrophe’ to central Europe

At least five people have died across Poland and Romania, hundreds have been evacuated and many remained stranded on Sunday after Storm Boris brought record rains and flash flooding to parts of central and eastern Europe.

Heavy rainfall began lashing central Europe on Friday as the slow-moving low-pressure system arrived, and it is expected to linger for days.

Storm Boris has brought a month’s worth of rain in just 24 hours to swathes of Poland, Romania, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, along with fierce winds.

Four dead bodies, three women and a man, were recovered from Romania. It was the hardest-hit country, with flooding impacting 19 localities across eight counties.

Strong winds downed dozens of trees, damaging cars and blocking roads and traffic.

The south-eastern region of Galati was especially badly hit, with at least 700 homes flooded and hundreds of people left stranded, according to Emil Dragomir, the mayor of Slobozia Conachi village.

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

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis on Saturday acknowledged that they were reeling under the effects of the increasing impact of the climate crisis.

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” he said.

Authorities said on Saturday that the rainfall figures for the past 24 hours were the heaviest in 100 years.

A Black Hawk helicopter was deployed to Galati to help with the search-and-rescue missions.

In Poland and the Czech Republic, rivers burst their banks and several areas were under the deluge of water.

One person died by drowning in Klodzko county in southwest Poland and 1,600 people were evacuated. Several municipalities were reeling under floods after rivers broke record high levels after days of heavy rainfall.

“The situation is very dramatic, it’s most dramatic in Klodzko county,” prime minister Donald Tusk told reporters on Sunday after meeting with the crisis management team in Klodzko town.

In southern Poland, authorities issued evacuation orders for homes in Glucholazy, a historic town near the Czech border, after the Biala Glicholaska River surged by two meters (6.5 feet) overnight into Saturday.

Poland’s interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak told TVN24 they would be “focusing on what the threats will be in the next few hours” after authorities received hundreds of incident reports.

In Krakow, Poland’s second-largest city, residents were given sandbags to protect their houses from flood waters.

More than 100,000 firefighters have been deployed in the Czech Republic as the authorities received nearly 2,900 incident reports on Friday, mostly related to fallen trees and flooding. Almost 50,000 homes reported power outages on Saturday, power company CEZ said.

“The ground is now saturated so all the rainwater is going to stay on the surface,” environment minister Petr Hladik said.

Footage released by the Czech Republic’s Fire and Rescue Service captured scenes of flooded streets in the southern municipality of Benešově nad Černou, where two women, who had ignored evacuation orders, were rescued by boat.

While neighbouring Slovakia ordered a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava, Austria has been pummelled by heavy rains, causing the rivers to swell.

Parts of the southern and eastern states in Germany are also flooded, with warnings in place for rivers in the state of Saxony.