Four feared dead in Czech floods, 2,000 evacuated
Date: 09-Aug-02
Country: CZECH REPUBLIC
Author: Petr Josek
Police in the town of Pisek said a thick oak tree uprooted and fell on a hut, killing a 21-year-old woman in a summer camp in the village of Varvazov, 80 km (50 miles) south of Prague.
The flooded Malse river swept away a car with a driver in the southern town of Kaplice, and he was feared dead, said a police officer in the southern capital Ceske Budejovice.
Czech Radio reported a 19-year-old woman was also feared drowned after a raft she was on turned over, and a fireman died of a heart attack during rescue work.
The flooding of the Malse and Blanice rivers forced more than 2,000 people to leave their homes in southern towns and villages, including Ceske Budejovice, 120 km (75 miles) south of Prague, known as home of the Czech Budweiser beer.
"We have evacuated people from allotment areas on the edge of the city, and elderly people in town," Zdenek Pfleger, a member of the Ceske Budejovice crisis committee, told Reuters.
Eyewitnesses said water was waist-deep in some residential areas of the historic city, which was full of submerged cars. Firemen were evacuating elderly people on boats.
Prague authorities cleared low-lying parks and islands in the capital, and evacuated some areas including a youth hostel popular with foreign backpackers.
A city spokesman told Reuters river levels would peak around midnight, but should not spill into streets.
Czech Railways said flooded rivers, landslides and fallen trees had stopped services on five routes in the region for several hours. Some areas lacked electricity supplies.
Forecasters said rainfall over the last few days was equivalent to a three-month summer average. Rain had stopped on Thursday, and water levels had begun to decline upstream.
The Czechs suffered their worst weather disaster in decades in 1997 when torrential rains flooded rivers in the east of the country, killing more than 50 people.
Insurer Allianz said it expected damage on property to reach hundreds of millions of crowns.
