Monday, Sep 16th 2024
2PM 35* C ☀️ 5PM 34*C ☀️ 5-Day Forecast
Six people have drowned in Austria, Poland and Romania and four others are missing in the Czech Republic as Storm Boris continues to lash central and eastern Europe, bringing torrential rain and floods that have forced the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes. Swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been battered by high winds and unusually fierce rains since Thursday. Austria’s vice-chancellor, Werner Kogler, said on Sunday that a firefighter had died tackling flooding in Lower Austria as authorities declared the province, which surrounds the capital, Vienna, a disaster area. Some areas of the Tyrol were blanketed by up to a metre (3ft) of snow – an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30C (86F) last week. Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early on Sunday and several metro lines were shut down in Vienna, where the Wien river was threatening to overflow its banks, according to the APA news agency. Emergency services had made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes. Firefighters have intervened around 150 times in Vienna since Friday to clear roads blocked by storm debris and pump water from cellars, local media reported.
