Hungary and Poland bolster river defences as flood’s death toll and damage rise

The Danube swallowed riverside roads in central Budapest as floodwaters from Storm Boris continued to surge through central Europe, where the death toll from the disaster rose to 23 and the EU said it must do more to counter climate-related crises.
Hungary deployed soldiers to help police and other emergency services build sandbag walls and other defences as it braced for the peak of floodwater, which has killed seven people in both Poland and Romania, five in Austria and four in the Czech Republic.
“This is the most difficult stage of the defence… The good news is that we already know the highest water level, and it won’t exceed what we faced in the past, so we are prepared for these conditions,” said Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, noting that experts expected the flood to peak below the record highs of a 2013 inundation.
“We have a solid team in place, and everyone is working calmly and effectively,” he added. “We will manage to guide the water safely out of the country without any major danger or trouble, but we need to remain calm and focused. While this task is familiar to us, it still requires serious attention.”
Mr Orban visited workers preparing flood barriers in Kismaros, a town on the Danube north of Budapest, where officials said 70 per cent of planned defences were complete and nearly 100,000 sandbags had been put in place by some 600 soldiers, firefighters and volunteers.
“We are waiting for the peak in Kismaros on Friday,” Mr Orban wrote on social media. “It will be difficult, but our soldiers will stand their ground.”
Polish emergency services and volunteers raced to bolster defences in Wroclaw, the county’s third-largest city, ahead of the predicted peak of the floodwater on the Oder river on Thursday.
“We are concentrating on keeping the Oder within its banks… We have a very difficult dozen or so hours ahead of us,” said Polish interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak.
Poland has created a crisis fund equivalent to €468 million to respond to the floods, while the Czech government plans to rejig its budget to account for damage estimated at a potential $4 billion (€3.6 billion) and Austria has tripled its disaster fund to more than €1 billion.
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has called for the EU to provide more than €1 billion in emergency aid for flood-hit member states, and he has invited European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to Wroclaw on Thursday to meet him and the leaders of Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
“I expect the EU to take very seriously the need to build anti-flood infrastructure in those countries that have suffered the most. On Thursday, the head of the Commission and I shall discuss it in detail,” Mr Tusk said.
EU crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic warned that the eastern floods and wildfires in Portugal on the bloc’s western fringe showed that “the global reality of climate breakdown has moved into the everyday lives of Europeans.”            
“It is crucial that together we step up our disaster preparedness and response efforts on a national as well as on a European level…because make no mistake – this tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future,” he said.
Mr Lenarcic called on the EU and member states to “make sure we are ready when the next disaster strikes. Because we are already living in an age of crisis. Europe is the fastest-warming continent globally. And is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events like the one we are discussing today. We cannot return to a safer past.”