One person drowned in south-west Poland and thousands were evacuated across the border in the Czech Republic after heavy rain continued to batter Central Europe on Sunday, causing flooding in several parts of the region.

A firefighter working in Austria was also killed, Austrian Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said on Sunday on X as authorities declared the province which surrounds Vienna a disaster area.

Four people were also found dead in Romania on Saturday after days of torrential rain in a low-pressure system named Boris, which has caused rivers to overflow across the country. One more person was found dead on Sunday.

One dead and 1,600 evacuated in Poland’s Kłodzko county

Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Kłodzko county — where one person drowned and 1,600 have been evacuated — was the worst hit area of the country.

“The situation is very dramatic,” Mr Tusk told reporters on Sunday after a meeting in Kłodzko town.

The local river had risen to 665 centimetres on Sunday morning, well above the alarm level of 240.

That surpassed a record seen in heavy flooding in 1997, which partly damaged the town and killed 56 people in Poland.

Officials in Glucholazy, in Poland’s Nysa county, ordered evacuations on Sunday morning as a local river started to break its banks, a bridge collapsed and the town was cut off from power supplies.

Firefighters and soldiers had been working to protect the town’s infrastructure since Saturday but that failed to prevent the bridge collapse.

Police announced plans for people trapped in flooded houses in Nysa county to be rescued by helicopter.

Local media reported a house was also swept away and a bridge collapsed in the mountain town of Stronie Slaskie — where a local dam burst, according to the Polish weather institute.

Houses ‘under water’ in Czechia

In Czechia, a quarter of a million homes were without power due to high winds and rain.

Police reported four people were missing on Sunday.

Three were in a car that was swept into a river in the north-eastern town of Lipová-lázně, and another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the south-east.

Residents across the Czech border also said the situation was worse than flooding seen before.

“What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water, and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” resident Pavel Bily said.

“We don’t know what will be next,” resident Mirek Burianek said.

“The internet network isn’t working, telephones don’t work … We are waiting for who will show up [to help].”

A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.

The fire service in the region said it had evacuated 1,900 people as of Sunday morning, while many roads were impassable.

More than 10,000 people had been evacuated across the country, the head of the fire service told Czech television.

In the worst hit areas, more than 100 millimetres of rain fell overnight and around 450mm since Wednesday evening, the Czech weather institute said.

Romania floods ease as Hungary predicts waters to rise

Romanian authorities said rainfall was less intense on Sunday than on Saturday, when flooding killed four and damaged 5,000 homes.

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis said. 

Towns and villages in seven counties across eastern Romania were affected, and the country’s emergency response unit said it was still searching for two people missing.

“The water came into the house, it destroyed the walls, everything,” resident Sofia Basalic said.

“It took the chickens, the rabbits, everything. It took the oven, the washing machine, the refrigerator. I have nothing left,” she said.

More rain is expected on Sunday and Monday.

Officials raised forecasts for the Danube in Budapest, Hungary to rise to above 8.5 metres in the second half of this week — nearing the record 8.91m seen in 2013.

“According to forecasts, one of the biggest floods of the past years is approaching Budapest but we are prepared to tackle it,” Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karacsony said.

Hundreds of people have already been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said.

Reuters