GERMANY: Germany sank further underwater yesterday as flood waters swept northwards from the Czech Republic and Austria, destroying dams and sending thousands of people fleeing their homes, writes Derek Scally from Berlin
Environmental experts warned that the flood waters could be contaminated with chlorine and other dangerous chemicals, after a Czech chemical plant near the German border was flooded.
Flood waters have so far left nine people dead in Germany. By yesterday evening, the river Elbe through Dresden was six metres higher than normal, the highest level in 150 years.
"We have started evacuating certain parts of the city that we know will become islands," said Mr Ingold Rossberg, the mayor of Dresden.
The city's historic buildings in the old city were under a metre of water yesterday. Gallery workers hastily moved priceless works of art to higher floors of the city gallery, while the cellar of the famous Semper Opera was completely flooded. Deutsche Bahn, the national train company, said it would cost more than €500 million to repair the flooded main train station.
Authorities emptied the region's hospitals of patients on Wednesday night, flying them to hospitals around Germany, while police evacuated more than 3,000 Dresden residents.
"About 9.30 this morning the waters started to rise rapidly. If the police hadn't come for us, I don't know what we would have done," said one evacuated resident. "It's so difficult to believe this is happening here."
The river was still rising by 20 cm an hour yesterday evening and authorities said they were not sure if the river's dykes would withstand the flood waters. The flood wave from the Czech Republic will push the river levels above nine metres tomorrow and leave a trail of flooding and destruction as it flows north to the Baltic Sea.
Authorities say it will be early next week before the situation begins to improve.
As people in southern Germany returned to their sodden, mud-filled homes, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, announced the government was bringing forward its aid programme to the affected areas.
"We have decided to transfer the first amount of the €100 million emergency aid available today," Mr Schröder told reporters yesterday, appealing to ordinary Germans to make donations to special bank accounts. However his conservative challenger in next month's election, Mr Edmund Stoiber, said billions, not millions worth of aid was needed.
A special government team is monitoring the river for toxin leaks after a cloud of chlorine gas escaped from the chemical plant near the Czech town of Usti nad Labem.
Prague began its clean-up operation yesterday as the flood waters began to recede, just centimetres from breaching the hastily constructed flood defences around the old town.
In neighbouring Slovakia, authorities declared a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava, as the Danube kept rising to nearly 10 meters, its highest level for 100 years.
"This is the critical stage. The river will keep rising until \ morning," said Mr Ladislav Szakallos, a rescue team spokesman in in Bratislava.
The Government has allocated €300,000 worth of emergency humanitarian assistance to help in the relief of those hit by flooding in the Czech Republic and neighbouring Slovakia and Romania.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in a letter to the Czech Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Spidla, pledged €200,000 of the sum to the Czech Republic. Mr Ahern sympathised with Mr Spidla for "the tragic loss of life in the damaging floods". - (PA)