Floods that swept through central and eastern Europe have led to at least 22 deaths in four countries as two other regions are now bracing for flooding to hit them.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has deployed soldiers to reinforce barriers along the Danube in Budapest where the mayor warned residents that the largest floods in a decade were expected to hit.
Meanwhile the city of Wroclaw in southwestern Poland saw firefighters and soldiers spend the night using sandbags to reinforce river embankments. The city zoo, located along the Oder, appealed for volunteers to fill sandbags on Tuesday morning.
“We and our animals will be extremely grateful for your help,” it said in its appeal.
Preparation in both areas follows swathes of Central Europe suffering the effects of deadly Storm Boris, with seven people dying in Romania, seven in Poland, five in Austria and three in the Czech Republic, according to officials. Several others have gone missing.
The storm has also dumped up to five times the average September rainfall on parts of each country, along with Hungary and Slovakia, in four days, submerging entire neighbourhoods and forcing thousands to evacuate.
In Nysa, a northwestern Polish city of 44,000, officials ordered residents to flee for higher ground as floodwaters from central Europe threatened to breach an embankment.
Volunteers helped rescue workers heave sandbags to build up the broken embankment around Nysa overnight. Poland has declared a state of disaster in the area.
Residents who have been evacuated are afraid of looters, with some returning to check their homes are safe, despite assurances from Prime Minister Donald Tusk that authorities would act "ruthlessly" against the perpetrators.
"(They) assured us that services would take care of our belongings and property. But we are afraid ... because we are already hearing that looters have become active," Nysa resident Sabina Jakubowska, 45, told Reuters.
Poland has set aside 1 billion zlotys (£197 million) for flood victims.
In other regions of central Europe, government have scrambled to help local authorities, such as in the Czech Republic where it has supported the organisation of regional elections. They are to take place on Friday and Saturday, but with several schools and other buildings serving as polling stations badly damaged.
Damage across central Europe is expected to reach billions of euros.
