Four people have died in Romania in floods triggered by storm Boris, which brought torrential rains and widespread disruption to central and eastern Europe, according to rescue services. Since Thursday, large parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by strong winds and unusually heavy rain .

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which is increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” said Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. “We must continue to strengthen our ability to anticipate extreme weather events.”

In Romania, four bodies were discovered in the hardest-hit region , Galati in the southeast, where 5,000 homes were damaged . Hundreds of people were rescued in 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, posting a video of flooded homes in a village on the Danube River.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati, where he said 700 homes had been flooded. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is visiting the area, while President Iohannis sent his “condolences to the grieving families.”

Some 100,000 firefighters have been mobilized in the Czech Republic, where nearly 2,900 incidents were recorded on Friday, most of them involving fallen trees and flooding. Nearly 50,000 homes were without electricity on Tuesday, the local Czech electricity company said, and a hospital in the southeastern city of Brno was evacuated on Saturday morning.

“The ground is now saturated, so all the rainwater will remain on the surface,” Environment Minister Petr Hladik told X. In Austria, train services were suspended in the east of the country early this morning and several subway lines were closed in the capital Vienna, where the Wien River threatened to overflow, according to the APA news agency.

Emergency services carried out nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in the state of Lower Austria, where floods had trapped many residents in their homes.

(Unioneonline/vl)

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