;)
RAGUE, Aug. 12 — Parts of the historic center of
Prague were under water tonight and 50,000 residents were ordered
evacuated as rivers swollen by more than a week of near constant rain
etched ribbons of destruction across Central Europe and southern
Russia.
More than a dozen people were killed by high waters today, pushing the
toll for the last week well past 70. In Russia alone, 58 people have died
in flooding caused by some of the heaviest rains in memory.
With the worst rains since 1890 pelting the Czech Republic, Prime
Minister Vladimir Spidla declared a state of emergency in nearly half the
country.
Late tonight, Prague's mayor, Igor Nemec, said Mala Strana, the
carefully preserved heart of the old city, could be flooded by Tuesday
afternoon because heavy rains had forced the opening of three dams farther
south on the River Vltava.
The mayor ordered residents to start leaving as soon as they could and
said city schools would open before dawn to accommodate evacuees.
In Austria, at least three people died as the Salzach River burst its
banks south of Salzburg and threatened to inundate the city at the height
of its famous summer festival, forcing authorities to close most bridges
and major roads. Floodwaters rose in Hungary and Germany, and in northern
Austria the authorities halted river traffic on parts of the Danube.
Mayor Nemec said the Vltava River, which wends through the center of
Prague, flowing fast through the arches of the historic Charles Bridge,
was already more than five feet above its normal level and was expected to
rise six and a half feet more by Tuesday.
High embankments should protect much of the city center, but the floods
expected on Tuesday would cover historic Kampa Island, a favorite tourist
destination in the shadow of Prague Castle, parts of the Old Town near the
medieval Jewish Cemetery, the working-class district of Liben and all the
main islands in the Vltava.
The mayor said the floodwaters could take up to a week to recede.
In Linz, Austria, 120 miles west of Vienna, rescue workers lowered
baskets from helicopters to rescue people stranded in their homes, and a
fireman was swept away by roiling waters in Mariapfarr, near Salzburg. In
the eastern German city of Leipzig, firefighters and soldiers helped
residents battle rising waters as the Pleisse River broke its banks.
German tourists fleeing the Austrian flooding found the autobahn
between Salzburg and Munich under as much as five feet of water, Reuters
reported. Three people died in Germany today, including an 8-year-old girl
who was hit by an uprooted tree, and a state of emergency was declared in
parts of the German states of Bavaria and Saxony.
In Switzerland, the river port of Basel was shut after part of the
swollen Rhine River was closed to navigation, and in France a sodden
mountainside gave way, sliding into a highway near Moutiers in the French
Alps.
In southeastern Russia, where at least 58 people died when flash floods
swept vacation resorts near the Black Sea coast over the weekend,
authorities today began vaccinating residents and vacationers, fearing an
outbreak of hepatitis A and typhoid.
In Prague, soldiers and police officers were helping fill sandbags in a
last-minute effort to protect pubs and residences dating back centuries on
Kampa Island. Some residents said the government had moved too slowly to
protect them.
"It's terribly badly organized," said Ladislav Pregner, as he moved
sandbags to try to protect his hotel, the Golden Scissors, from rising
waters. "The cops just stand there, and if the waters come it's going to
be a big problem."
Mr. Pregner pointed to the half-dozen soldiers slowly filling sandbags
as tourists milled around taking pictures. "We had to buy our own sandbags
and buy our own sand to fill them," he said. "The city is totally
unprepared."
Farther along the embankment, floodwaters were already filling the
basement of the Kampa Museum, and curators worked feverishly through the
morning to move their collection of modern art to higher floors. By late
afternoon, a huge wooden chair from the museum's collection, which once
stood on a concrete pile in the river, was half submerged.
Librarians evacuated books and rare documents from the basement of the
National Library, the Klementinum, and from the basement of the Czech
senate in the Waldstejn Palace.
At least seven people have died from the storms in the Czech Republic
over the last six days, including two volunteer firemen and, today, a
vacationer who was swept away in the Prague suburb of Radotin.
By late evening, floodwaters had risen in several historic towns,
including Cesky Krumlov, a Renaissance jewel near the Austrian border, and
the fez-making city of Strakonice, whose 12th-century castle sits on an
island in the middle of the normally placid Otava River. There, the
regional governor ordered 4,300 residents evacuated from the city center,
and the authorities feared that it might take until dawn to move them
all.
Asked why it had taken until near midnight today to announce the
partial evacuation of Prague, Mayor Nemec replied that he had been poorly
advised. "I'm not a water engineer," he told a reporter.
Meteorologists said abnormal weather patterns had brought the region
the equivalent of several months rainfall in just six days. Prime Minister
Spidla said the floods were worsened by industrial farming and forestry
that was introduced during four decades of Communist rule. "We have to
begin thinking about how to reconstruct our landscape in order to avoid
such floods again," Mr. Spidla said.
The Czech Hydrometeorological Office said late today that the heavy
rains would gradually move eastward, with only occasional showers
continuing in Prague and the south and west of the country.
But a senior river water official, Jiri Friedel, said even light rains
would increase the flooding. "The ground is saturated and the water has no
place to go," he said.
Several hundred Prague residents and some of the many visitors drawn to
the historic city gathered on the 14th-century Charles Bridge to watch the
racing brown river waters. In the 19th century, felled trees shooting down
the river in floods brought down two of the bridge's massive sandstone
arches.
In Zbraslav, an outlying suburb of Prague alongside the Vltava,
Miloslava Prikrylova, 73, looked glumly from her ground-floor window at
the flooded orchards across a highway.
"I've lived here 40 years and we've never seen anything like this," she
said. Then, with a touch of the humor for which Prague is known, she
added, "I have my bathing suit ready."
printlogo.gif
p.gif
pixel.gif