Update: Flood Death Toll Rises in Europe With More Heavy Rain Forecast

The death toll from flooding in central Europe is climbing, with Poland preparing to follow Austria in declaring a state of emergency.

Storm Boris has brought torrential rain to the region, with red alerts still in place for parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and southern Germany. Six people were confirmed to have died as flash floods hit Romania over the weekend, with hundreds evacuated.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is holding an extraordinary cabinet meeting this morning, after flooding forced the evacuation of more than 3,000 people, with three fatalities reported by local media. While water levels are receding in highland areas, cities including Wroclaw are now threatened.

Poland’s biggest insurer PZU slumped after reporting a surge in weather-related claims. The flooding also threatens to delay elections in the Czech Republic, while campaigning for polls in Austria has been suspended.

The weather system is mixing cold air from the north with moisture drawn from the warm waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, resulting in heavy downpours. After a summer of heat waves across southern Europe, climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.

In the Czech Republic, about 12,000 people were evacuated from their homes and over 200,000 households remain without electricity. A local unit of Veolia Environnement SA shut down its Trebovice coal-fired power plant over the weekend, CTK news service reported.

One person died in the northeast of the country, with another seven still missing, according to the police.

The Czech government will meet later today to assess the flood damage and its response. It warned last week that the situation is comparable to the major flooding that affected the country in 1997 and 2002.

Czech politicians were considering whether to delay this weekend’s elections, where a third of Senate seats are being contested. Masaryk University in Brno postponed the start of the school year by a week because of the floods.

Hungary is bracing for its worst flooding in more than a decade, with Budapest on the highest alert. More than a million sandbags will be deployed along the Danube in the capital, while roads along the river will be closed this evening.

Thousands of volunteers are expected to join as many as 17,000 soldiers helping with flood-defense work, according to Interior Minister Sandor Pinter. Water levels are only projected to peak later this week.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose government holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, canceled all international engagements, according to a post on X. Orban was due to present the presidency’s priorities to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France on Wednesday.

Cross-border trains have been halted to neighboring Austria, where many intercity rail services have been canceled around Vienna. The national rail operator has advised against any unnecessary travel until Tuesday evening, with the country bracing for heavy rain on Monday.

Power producer EVN is accelerating its draining of the Ottensteiner Reservoir, adding to flows on the Kamp River, a tributary of the Danube. Water flows on the Danube in Korneuburg, just upstream from Vienna, peaked early on Monday at 10,300 cubic meters per second. That’s a once-in-85-years volume.

In Lower Austria, where a state of emergency was declared on Saturday, two elderly people died after being trapped in their flooded homes, news service ORF reported, citing a police spokesperson. A firefighter died in over the weekend.

Austrian politicians canceled campaign events in the run-up to Sept. 29 elections.

Les pluies persistent sur l’Europe centrale ce matin. Autriche et République Tchèque reçoivent encore plusieurs dizaines de mm.
L’épisode prendra fin mardi matin.
Carte https://t.co/daODHavCwo pic.twitter.com/90duFCMWGd

— Meteo60 (@meteo60) September 16, 2024

Serbia is bracing for a possible flood wave from the Danube later in the week.

River levels in the southern Polish town of Kłodzko near the Czech border were 1.5 meters above the record set in 1997, according to data from the Polish National Institute of Meteorology and Water Management.

Polish insurer PZU said it has received more than 3,000 weather-related claims over the past two days, or nearly nine times more than on a typical weekend.

Flood claims could curb PZU’s profit by 10%, according to Ipopema brokerage estimates. The company’s shares fell as much as 4.4% in Warsaw. Insurers Uniqa and Vienna Insurance Group also declined.

Germany has also experienced flooding in Saxony and Bavaria, with water levels continuing to rise. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said the increased frequency of floods was related to global warming, underlining the need to transition to renewable energy, according to comments cited on Monday by the Funke media group

“We should be clear about the cause: increasingly frequent floods, disasters like in the Ahr Valley, this year in Bavaria — they are a consequence of the climate crisis,” Habeck said. “We must prepare for more extreme weather events and take precautions.”