Subscribe here: [ Ссылка ] Europe is the fastest warming continent and is seeing temperatures rise at around twice the global average rate. This has severe implications for ecosystems, food security, and overall climate resilience. Europe registered over 200 fatalities due to floods in 2021, and 60,000 premature deaths due to heatwaves in 2022. The economic losses from weather and climate-related extremes in the EU reached 650 billion euros between 1980 and 2021. This highlights the urgent need to speed up the implementation of adaptation measures and to continue the Green Deal.
Weather alerts have been issued across Italy as Storm Boris moved southwards after devastating parts of central Europe.
The highest rainfall is expected to hit the northern regions of Emilia-Romagna and Marche. Emilia-Romagna was hit by devastating flooding in May 2023, inundating homes and businesses and forcing the cancellation of a Formula 1 Grand Prix at the region's Imola circuit.
Forecasters predicted 110 millimeters (mm) of rain in Marche and 90 mm in Romagna over a 24-hour period, starting on Wednesday.
A firefighter died during a flood rescue in Austria and one person drowned in Poland, as torrential rain caused by Storm Boris continued to wreak havoc across Central and Eastern Europe. In Romania, five people have died, while several remain unaccounted for in the Czech Republic. The Austrian province surrounding Vienna has been declared a disaster area, with its leaders speaking of "an unprecedented extreme situation". Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk declared a state of natural disaster.
Some of the worst rainfall has been in the Czech Republic, where some areas have seen around three months’ rainfall in just three days. Evacuations are under way and four people remain missing - three in a car which disappeared into a river in North Moravia, and one man who was swept into a flooded stream in South Moravia. Marek Joch, a resident of Lipov in the southeast, said the town was "closed from all sides" and the "next wave" of the flood is still to come.
"Now everyone is trying to clean up as quickly as possible to prevent further large spills from the riv. Unfortunately, no one knows when the water will recede. "We still have to survive until Tuesday, this is not the end.” Jesenik, a town located in the Jeseniky mountains, is described as completely cut off, with roads and rail lines underwater. Around 17,000 people in the Kłodzko area alone are without power, and internet and mobile telephone connections are down.
Several dozen police and firefighters in Prague were called to rescue a man who went swimming in the flooded Vltava at 7am on Sunday. On Saturday, police in North Moravia were called after three men were spotted wading into the flooded River Odra on paddleboards. The mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Romania's south-eastern Galati region, said 700 homes had been flooded.
"This is a catastrophe of epic proportions," Emil Dragomir said. Four people were killed in Galati on Saturday, with a fifth death confirmed on Sunday. In Austria, governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner said a firefighter had died while pumping out a flooded cellar. She said the whole of the Lower Austria province has been declared a catastrophe zone.
Multiple trains have been cancelled, parts of the Vienna underground have been closed, and at least one motorway has flooded. In a post on X, Austria‘s Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the storm situation had "worsened" and was "very serious." In the Polish town of Stonie Slaski, a dam has been breached, releasing a torrent of water that has destroyed at least one house, the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management said.
In the same town a bridge collapsed, funnelling water through the streets. "Soldiers supporting the local population are cut off from their land route back," the Polish Ministry of Defence said. "Many residents have to be evacuated from the roofs of their homes.”
In Glucholazy, in the southwest, the mayor of the town said the local river had overflowed its banks and was flooding the town. A resident of the town, Zofia Owsiaka, said everyone was "scared" and there seemed to be "no hope of the rain stopping". In Krakow, Poland's second largest city, residents have been offered sandbags for flood protection.
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