Cyclone Boris brought floods: the first victim in Poland, four missing in the Czech Republic

The local floods, brought by Cyclone Boris to the south of Poland and the east and north of the Czech Republic, took the first life in Poland last night, and the Czech Republic is looking for four missing persons.

Thousands of citizens in both countries spent the night in evacuation in front of the flood before it reached their homes.

"The first victim has been confirmed, here in the Klod district. 1.600 people have been evacuated there, we expect that there will be many more evacuations. In the Klod basin, the situation is the most dramatic," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has been visiting the affected areas since the floods began.

In Silesia and the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in the south-west and south of Poland, in the area on the border with the Czech Republic, mountain streams and rivers due to heavy rainfall have turned into torrents and in some places the water is already over the embankment, while the retention and artificial lakes at the hydropower plant are also full. .

In the town of Gluholazi on the border with the Czech Republic, where the floods started and where the water broke through the protective embankments, Mayor Pavel Šimkovič this morning appealed to everyone to evacuate to higher ground with the dramatic message "We are sinking".

On Saturday, the firefighters of the State Fire Guard, with the help of the army and the territorial defense, went to the field 6.400 times to strengthen embankments, remove fallen trees and branches that complicate the railway traffic, which is interrupted on 40 tracks, and, from midnight to Sunday morning, in 2.300 interventions.

"The Klodska basin is in danger, where the water level of some rivers has risen dramatically and started to flood. In many places, the water level is stabilizing, and the culmination of precipitation has passed. We are counting on stabilization," Polish fire guard spokesman Karol Kježkovski told Polish private television Polsat.

Due to the strong wind and floods, many citizens were left without electricity, and the mobile phone signal was also unavailable in some places.

"We made the decision to start using satellite communication via Starlink, but we should not hope that a connection will be established immediately everywhere," Prime Minister Tusk said this morning.

In the neighboring Czech Republic, the search for four missing people began yesterday, one man in the south of Moravia who was swept away by a swollen stream in front of his house, and three people disappeared after their car fell into the river.

260.000 people in the Czech Republic are without electricity due to stormy winds and floods, in 87 places, mainly in the Moravian-Silesian region in the east of the country, the water level has exceeded the third highest level of flood alert, while 118 places are at the first or second level.

The Moravian-Silesian region and Olomouc declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and somewhere the embankments and torrents of mainly smaller rivers or the upper reaches of the larger ones, the Oder and the Elbe, were not able to withstand it, and overflowed over the dams of smaller hydropower plants, even though they had rapidly released water from their artificial reservoirs in the previous days. lakes.

So far, about 80 percent of the expected precipitation brought by Cyclone Boris has fallen in the Czech Republic, and it is estimated that the floods will remain only local.

The capital city of Prague was severely affected by floods in 2002 and 2013, it is safe at a lower, second level of flood danger, while in the east and northeast the floods can be even worse than the catastrophic ones in 1997.

The city of Jesenjik and the surrounding municipalities on the border with Poland were completely cut off from the world by torrents.

In both Poland and the Czech Republic, however, the authorities expect fewer victims and less material damage, because in recent years a lot of money has been invested in infrastructure and measures against flooding, in order to allow the rivers to overflow their banks where it is safe for people.