Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” one storm evacuee said.

Extreme flooding has claimed the lives of at least seven people in Central and Eastern Europe and forced thousands to flee their homes over the weekend.

Storm Boris—a low pressure system—has been lashing the area since Thursday, with major cities seeing a month’s worth of rain and some areas seeing their heaviest rainfall in 100 years between Saturday and Sunday.

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said, as The Guardian reported.

The storm has been deadliest in Romania, where four people were killed on Saturday and a fifth on Sunday, according toCNN. Hundreds of people also had to be rescued from rising waters.

The most impacted part of Romania was Galati, where the storm damaged around 5,400 homes—and around 700 in the village of Slobozia Conachi alone.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” Mayor Emil Dragomir said, as The Guardian reported.

“The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what’s coming—and this is still the beginning.”

The sixth death came in Austria, where a firefighter battling flooding perished on Sunday. Authorities have declared a disaster for Lower Austria, where Vienna is located, and staged nearly 5,000 rescues there Saturday night. The storm also shut down rail service in the eastern part of the country.

“We are experiencing difficult and dramatic hours in Lower Austria,” said the provincial governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner, as The Associated Press reported. “For many people in Lower Austria these will probably be the most difficult hours of their lives.”

In Poland, one person drowned in the hardest-hit region of Kłodzko, where around 1,600 people were forced to evacuate and 17,000 lost power.

In another town of Stonie Slaski, flood waters overwhelmed a dam and collapsed a bridge, while the river in Glucholazy overflowed its banks.

“The situation is still very dramatic in many place[s],” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday, according to CNN. “Unfortunately, these situations are repeating themselves in many places… but some residents sometimes underestimate the level of threat and refuse to evacuate.”

The storm also pummeled parts of Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where some of the highest rainfall totals in the region were reported and where four people are still missing.

The storm forced 10,000 people from the city of Opava to flee their homes, and Mayor Tomáš Navrátil said conditions were worse than in 1997’s so-called “flood of the century,” according to AP.

“What you see here is worse than in 1997, and I don’t know what will happen because my house is under water and I don’t know if I will even return to it,” Lipová-lázne resident Pavel Bily said, as The Guardian reported.

The rains are expected to continue at least through Monday.

In 2021, World Weather Attribution said that the climate emergency has made extreme flooding in Europe more likely. The storm also followed the hottest summer on record, as well as a warm beginning to September in the region, and warmer air can hold more moisture.

“People are in prison today for trying to warn the public how bad things are going to get,” author Matthew Todd wrote on social media in response to footage of a dam bursting in Poland. “Scientists have taken to the streets to warn us.”

“The idiotic media have failed to make it clear what’s coming—and this is still the beginning,” Todd continued. “Educate everyone you know.”

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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