CZECH REPUBLIC: Czech authorities have declared a state of emergency in seven of its 14 regions as flood waters caused by heavy rain and melting snow claimed their seventh victim yesterday.
Swollen rivers caused havoc across central Europe yesterday with authorities in Hungary and eastern Germany bracing themselves for the worst today.
The Danube through Budapest is expected to reach its highest level of 8.6m (28ft) this evening, well above the record level of 8.48 metres in 2002.
Around 10,000 Hungarian rescue workers and volunteers worked into the night building makeshift dykes out of sandbags to slow the rising water spilling into low-lying areas. By yesterday afternoon nearly 500 people in northern Hungary had been forced from their homes.
Saxon authorities said the river Elbe was rising 1cm per hour last night and would reach its high-point today.
Already 1,500 people have had to leave their homes, but engineers said that the 130km (81 miles) of dykes along the Elbe would hold, despite the extra load, and that water levels would remain at least two metres below the floods of 2002 that swamped Dresden's historic city centre.
Some 10,000 Czechs have left their homes since the flood waters began to rise. Czech news agencies reported the death of a 78-year old woman in eastern Bohemia yesterday.
The northern town of Hrensko, on the German border, was completely flooded by the Elbe, while in the city of Ústí nad Labem, the river, normally just two metres deep, had reached 8.8 metres, Prague authorities said the situation was stable in Prague, where the dykes along the river Volga were raised after the 2002 floods.
The Czech finance ministry said it would make €170 million available to repair flood damage.
In Austria, 400 people were evacuated from the village of Dümkrut, northeast of Vienna, after a dam broke.