Storm Boris flooding may hit Italy as Portugal wildfires blaze – live

Details are beginning to emerge about some of the 19 people who have been killed by the floods.

An 81-year-old woman from Würmla in Austria is the fifth person to die in the current flooding in Lower Austria.

According to chief inspector Johann Baumschlager she died in her flooded house and her body was discovered by emergency services on Tuesday morning.

Three firefighters from the Vila Nova de Oliveirinha, Tábua, fire brigade died on Tuesday as they were responding to a call of a fire in that area, the mayor has said.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, expressed his “deep dismay” at the deaths and sent his condolences to their families.

A statement published on the Portuguese Presidency’s website said: “The President of the Republic is deeply dismayed by the accident involving a fire engine, causing the death of three firefighters, and expresses his deepest condolences to their families, as well as to the Oliveirinha Fire Department.”

Twenty-one people have been killed across Poland, Hungary, Romania and Austria as Storm Boris continues to rip through the region.

Flooding killed seven people in Romania, where waters have receded since the weekend, six in Poland, five in Austria, and three in the Czech Republic. Tens of thousands of Czech and Polish households were still without power or fresh water.

Warsaw’s Zoo has made a desperate appeal to help its animals after Storm Boris floods ravaged the city.

In a post on Facebook, they said “defenseless creatures’ fate is fully dependent on us – people.” They will be arranging collections at the town hall and from the Gdanski Bridge and have requested people bring wet and dry food, clean blankets and big towels.

Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, cancelled all of his engagements today in response to the fires and said the country faced “some very difficult times over the next few days”.

An extreme fire warning has been extended until Thursday night.

The city of Wroclaw has readied buses for possible evacuations and dropped sandbags from military helicopters to reinforce river embankments amid flooding fears.

The city said it expected the flood wave to peak there around Friday, though some had predicted that would happen sooner.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with a crisis team early Tuesday and said there are contradictory forecasts from meteorologists.

The Italian Meteorological Service has issued warnings for heavy rainfall, strong winds and intense storms from the early hours of this morning, lasting until Thursday.

The alerts stretch from northern coast of Emilia-Romagna to the south of the country.

Croatia is preparing for potentially dangerously high river levels because of heavy rainfall across the region.

The Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service warns the Danube could experience an “extremely rare” water increase and plans are in place to put up flood barriers if necessary.

The BBC reports that experts expect the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, to hit a record high although they don’t think it will burst its banks.

A field hospital is to be set up in the Polish city of Nysa where some of the worst flooding has happened.

Gazeta Wyborcza reports that Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, deputy prime minister, said at a conference in Wrocław: “We have made a decision to launch a field hospital and set it up in Nysa.”

He said it will be fully operational later today.

Overnight, volunteers helped rescue workers heave sandbags to build up the broken embankment around the city of more than 40,000 people in southwestern Poland.