Romania and Europe under Flood Alerts
For over a week now, several Central European countries are facing floods and landslides serious enough to kill, with thousands of people left stranded and damages worth billions.
România Internațional, 11.06.2013, 13:29
Three quarters of Romania’s territory is under code yellow alert for heavy rain, strong gales and hail. According to weather experts, storms will quickly spread to the south and east as well. A code yellow flood alert has been issued for several rivers in 13 counties in the north, northwest and southwest as well. Two people have been killed last week by floods and landslides caused by torrential rain, with dozens of households, hundreds of hectares of farmland and several local roads destroyed.
The focus of attention is now the river Danube, closely monitored now on its Romanian course, after going on record for high levels in Bratislava, Vienna and Budapest. Romanian experts assured everyone that the debit of the Danube would not overcome the one recorded in April, however. The government, preventively, has however called on local authorities and everyone involved to take measures on time. The head of the government, Victor Ponta, called on the Minister of the Interior to get in touch with Hungarian authorities in order to check if help from Romania is needed, considering the neighboring country is facing the worst flooding in decades.
Hungary has prolonged its state of emergency until 19 July, a move made by Parliament on Monday. The central European country has called on its armed forces and on volunteers to consolidate 800 km of levees, after the level of the Danube reached record levels in several sectors, higher than in 2006. The floods in Hungary have been affecting train travel between Romania and Austria, with several trains being diverted temporarily. Germany has also been facing its worst flooding in the last 10 years.
The worst affected were the south and the east, where thousands have been evacuated for fear of the river Elba overflowing. 20,000 soldiers and thousands of volunteers have been deployed in the operation. Other countries in Central Europe have also been affected, to the point where the most recent European count shows that at least 20 people have lost their lives, tens of thousands have been evacuated, and hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been left under the water in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Switzerland, with damages estimated at billions of Euro.
