Officials may use force to clear homes by Oder

Thousands of people were told to leave their homes along the river Oder between Germany and Poland last night as rising flood waters broke through dykes and threatened to submerge entire villages. A surge of water made an 800 metre hole in a dyke in the German village of Aurith, leaving houses almost entirely covered in water.

As the situation deteriorated dramatically yesterday, authorities in some places on the German side of the Oder abandoned efforts to fight the floods. Many of the dykes, some of which are over 250 years old, have been so badly weakened by the floods that they are on the point of crumbling. Even if river levels subside, the crisis will remain acute for a number of days.

More than 100 people have died in the Czech Republic and Poland during the past two weeks as floods have ruined hundreds of thousands of acres of crops and threatened hundreds of villages and towns.

The Polish city of Wroclaw was bracing itself for a second wave of flooding last night after its historic centre narrowly escaped destruction last week.

The Polish government is drafting the unemployed to help rebuild 140 bridges and 1,600 kilometres of road that has been destroyed by flooding.

Flooding has subsided in the Czech Republic, leaving the government with a massive bill for repairing roads, railways, communications and farm land destroyed by the disaster.

German officials expressed frustration at the refusal of many people to leave their homes, despite the fact that flooding has reached five metres in some places and was expected to rise to seven metres last night.

Mr Alwin Ziel, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg, where the floods are concentrated, broadcast a dramatic appeal yesterday, warning that those who remained in the danger zone were putting their lives at risk.

Brandenburg's prime minister, Mr Manfred Stolpe, warned people in the affected areas not to underestimate the danger and not to be fooled into believing that they could defy nature.

Officials said they would remove people forcibly as a last resort but they insisted that rising water levels were the most effective arguments for moving.

Almost 1,000 soldiers were helping to secure dykes and building makeshift fortifications out of sandbags, but officials conceded privately that the measures were inadequate to stem the floods.

Some local people complained that the dykes had been neglected since reunification, whereas they had been carefully maintained by the communist East German regime.

Others claimed that the authorities responded to the crisis too late and that their homes could have been saved if fortifications had been built earlier.

Many villages along the Oder have become ghost towns, but police are patrolling the evacuated areas to prevent looting. Most evacuees have been leaving in private cars, taking a few possessions with them. Many are barricading their houses with sandbags before they leave and moving as much furniture as possible onto upper floors.

Gym halls and schools have been converted into makeshift dormitories, but most evacuees prefer to stay with friends or relatives. For many, the worst floods in living memory have meant the loss of everything they own.

Insurance analysts estimate the cost of the damage so far at over DM1 billion.

Reuter adds: The first opinion poll to be held in Poland since the floods began suggested the ruling formerly communist Democratic Alliance (SLD) party might escape electorally undamaged from opposition charges of bungling and delay early in the disaster.

The poll gave the SLD 26 per cent support, ahead of its biggest challenger, the Solidarity union led AWS alliance, with 22 per cent.

A Warsaw travel agency is offering special air tours over the areas of Poland worst affected by the flooding, the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported yesterday. The service will pick up passengers from as far away as Madrid.