GLUCHOLAZY (AFP) – One person has drowned in Poland and an Austrian fireman has died responding to floods, authorities said yesterday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains.
Since Thursday, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually fierce rains.
The storm has already caused the death of four people in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across the continent.
“We have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region” on the Polish-Czech border, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday morning.
Tusk was travelling through the southwest of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.
Around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko, and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters on the scene.
On Saturday, Polish authorities shut the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.
In the nearby village of Glucholazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched with fear as the fast-flowing waters of the swollen Biala river surged past.
“Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” Owsiaka, 65, told AFP. In the Czech Republic, police reported four people were missing yesterday. Three were in a car that was swept into a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne, and another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the southeast.
A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.
