Eastern Europeans counting the cost of floods

Bucharest - Across eastern and central Europe on Sunday, work began to clean up after the disastrous downpours and flooding that have taken at least 26 lives across the region.

The Harghita region in Romania, where 15 lives were lost in a week and 33 people have died since mid-August, was among the hardest-hit.

Three hundred people have been washed out of their homes there and will not be able to return until mid-October, local authorities said.

"About 30 houses have been completely destroyed by the floods and several hundred seriously damaged," the head of the local authority said.

"Reconstruction work cannot begin until the roads have been rebuilt." He said 200 troops were busy clearing away "mud and debris."

The cost to Romania of damage since the start of the month has been put by the interior ministry at €260-million.

In Switzerland, where six people have died in the last week, the 70 inhabitants of Oey-Diemtigen, near Bern, have been told they will have to wait weeks, if not months, before their homes can be lived in again.

In Bern itself about 340 people living in the lower town along the river Aar have been able to go home but many other local residents have had to stay in temporary shelters because electricity and gas supplies have not been restored.

In Austria, where four lives were lost, thousands of troops, firefighters and volunteers - among them 100 asylum-seekers - have been cleaning up in the western provinces of Vorarlberg and the Tyrol.

Priority is being given to clearing river beds to lessen the risk of future flooding. In most communes electricity supplies and phone lines have been restored.

First estimates put the cost of damage to the rail system in the two provinces at €15-million and to the main highway system at €5-million.

Many roads remained impassable, in particular in the Paznau valley in the Tyrol and in Vorarlberg, where damage to local roads is put at €30-million.

Gargellen in Vorarlberg will have to be supplied by helicopters for several days to come.

Further west, in Carinthia and Styria, more landslides were reported late on Friday and rain was forecast for Sunday, raising fears of further damage.

In Germany, where one person died, levels of the Danube and its tributary the Isar were falling, police said.

"But we shall have to wait several days for all the water to leave for good," a spokesperson said.

At Passau, at the meeting of the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz, water levels were almost back to normal and sandbags used to form dykes were being removed and streets cleaned.

In Poland electricity and gas services have been restored in flooded areas near the Czech border but movement by road remains difficult, according to local authorities who complain of the lack of reaction by central government.

On the side of the continent, in Portugal four new wildfires broke out as temperatures rose, just hours after firefighters tamed three blazes overnight, including one that raced through a nature reserve, officials said.

Two fires were burning in the northern districts of Braganca and Vila Real, one was burning in the central district of Aveiro and another in the southern district of Faro in the Algarve, Portugal's main tourism centre, the civil protection agency said in a statement.

A pilot was killed when his plane crashed while water-bombing a wild fire in Mallorca, Spanish emergency services said. - Sapa-AFP

source