(Bloomberg) -- Widespread flooding in central and eastern Europe from days of unrelenting rain is playing havoc with rail transportation and causing more evacuations of residents as well as damage to homes and infrastructure.
Some of the worst scenes on Sunday were in southwest Poland. In Glucholazy, a temporary bridge was torn away and another still under construction damaged as floodwaters raced through the town. A dam collapsed in Stronie Slaskie, cutting the town of about 6,000 people off from surrounding areas.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked his finance minister to prepare emergency aid, and Poland will also ask for European aid. “We will not leave anyone to fend for themselves,” Tusk said on X, formerly Twitter.
Poland’s defense minister said five police and military helicopters were being used to evacuate people.
In Austria, rail traffic was suspended on a section of a key line between Vienna and Salzburg due to flooding risk, and subway services on at least three lines in the capital, Vienna, were also affected.
Trains will be halted between Amstetten and St. Valentin on the so-called Weststrecke, a four-track high-speed route which accounts for about one third of all Austrian rail traffic and serves as a key connector between Germany and eastern Europe.
About 40 train lines in the Czech Republic were closed by Sunday. Passenger rail traffic between the Czech Republic and Poland has been suspended until further notice, the Polish railways PKP Intercity said.
Torrential rain has caused flooding across large swathes of central and eastern Europe. In Romania, flash flooding caused four deaths, and at least one death was reported in Poland and one — a firefighter — in Austria. Two more people in Romania have been missing for two days, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said Sunday.
The low-pressure vortex centered over the Balkan peninsula bought further, often heavy precipitation, on Sunday, especially in north, central and eastern Austria, according to the forecasting service GeoSphere.
Lower Austria, the country’s most populous province after Vienna, declared a state of emergency and advised people to postpone unnecessary travel. Authorities have evacuated about 1,100 homes so far.
Officials expect Austria’s Ottensteiner Reservoir to exceed capacity despite draining about half of its water volume in preparation for the heavy rains that started late last week. That will likely lead to further increase in water levels along the Kamp River, a tributary of the Danube.
“From Thursday to Sunday morning, some regions will have two to four times as much rain as in an average September,” said the Austrian forecasting against Geosphere.
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The highest recorded total was 353.6 millimeters (14 inches) at St. Poelten, west of Vienna.
Following heavy snowfall in the mountains Friday and Saturday down to lower elevations, Austria’s snow line will slowly rise to about 1,200 to 1,600 meters (3,937 to 5,249 feet) above sea level over the course of Sunday.
Polish and Czech authorities have also mobilized tens of thousands of first responders, and at least two border crossings between the countries were closed on Saturday due to the flooding of local roads on the Czech side.
The situation in the Czech Republic worsened into Sunday, with rivers flooding many towns and villages, mainly in the northeastern parts of the country.
“River levels have yet to peak in some places and we will be facing these difficult conditions for the rest of the day and probably also tomorrow,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Sunday as he appealed to residents to follow instructions from rescue services and leave their homes if necessary.
Authorities have begun evacuating more than 10,000 residents in the Czech town of Opava near the Polish border, and thousands more were forced to leave in nearby regions. Rescue services deployed army helicopters to help lift people trapped in inundated houses. More than 250,000 households were without electricity on Sunday morning.
--With assistance from Peter Laca, Irina Vilcu and Zoe Schneeweiss.
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