Central Europe began counting the cost of deadly and devastating floods caused by Storm Boris, as the European Union pledged billions of euro in aid to affected countries and northern Italy became the latest area to be inundated by torrential rain.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Emilia-Romagna, barely a year after floods and mudslides in the same region forced 45,000 residents to evacuate, killed 17 people and caused damage estimated at €8.5 billion.
“We are in a full emergency,” said Ravenna mayor Michele De Pascale. “The event is very similar to what we had last May.”
Two people were reported missing in the region after a roof on which they had taken refuge collapsed. The death toll from a week of floods triggered by Storm Boris remained at 24, after it claimed lives in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Austria.
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The Danube has swallowed up riverside roads in central Budapest and is expected to peak over the weekend, but the government of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban does not expect reinforced flood defences in the capital to be breached.
“The good news is that the forecasts were correct, and in the past two days, no significant rainfall has occurred anywhere [in Hungary]. We expect continued dry weather, which helps the defence efforts,” he said on Friday, while urging the country’s emergency services and citizens to remain alert over the coming days.
“The hardest [thing] in times like these is to maintain vigilance when one feels the worst is behind one,” he said, noting that the flood wave was expected to move relatively slowly through Hungary and exit the country only late next week.
In Poland, officials said the city of Wroclaw seemed to have come through the flood without suffering major damage, after the river Oder remained within embankments and barriers that had been raised and reinforced by soldiers, emergency crews and thousands of volunteers.
Nevertheless, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said the country would remain on alert because the slow-moving floodwaters would continue to put embankments under heavy pressure for several more days before subsiding.
“I am here to reassure you that Europe stands by your side,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in Wroclaw on Thursday evening, after talks with Polish, Czech, Austrian and Slovak leaders.
“This is a moment of need ... and we have all to stand together to overcome the challenge,” she added, announcing that affected countries could access €10 billion in so-called EU cohesion funds under a simplified procedure.
“Here we say it’s 100 per cent European money, no co-financing ... These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times need extraordinary measures,” she said, adding that the EU “solidarity fund” could also be tapped to finance infrastructure repairs.
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