Heavy rain causes flooding damage across Europe
Date: 06-Jan-03
Country: GERMANY
Author: Erik Kirschbaum
The flooding and high winds caused disruption in Germany, Britain and Portugal, with barge traffic curtailed on key German waterways and toppled trees blocking roads and rail lines.
In Romania, floods caused by melting snow killed three people and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Flood warnings across Britain remained in force, mostly in the south of the country. Torrential rains over the last week have already caused widespread flooding, causing accidents and severe disruption to the nation's railway services.
In Portugal, heavy overnight rains caused landslides, closed roads and flooded several towns. Emergency workers were also searching for cars which witnesses said had plunged into the River Douro, the centre of Portugal's famed port wine industry.
In Germany an 18-year-old motorist was killed when his car flipped over north of Hamburg on a road covered with black ice.
One regional train derailed after running into a fallen tree near Karlsruhe, although no one was injured, police said.
Authorities said swollen Rhine tributaries, the Mosel and Main rivers, had flooded over their banks in many areas, bringing barge traffic to a halt.
Traffic on the Rhine, one of the world's busiest waterways, was being restricted in some areas. A 35-km (20-mile) segment of the river near Koblenz was closed, German river police said.
ROOFS BLOWN OFF
"It's been raining here hard for the last three days," said an official at the water and shipping office in Cologne, where the Rhine was more than five metres (yards) higher than normal at 8.18 metres and expected to reach a level of 8.30 metres later last week - a point that would idle all barge traffic.
Flood barriers were being prepared in Cologne and other Rhine towns such as Cologne and Koblenz. Barges travelling on some parts of the swollen Rhine were required to travel at reduced speeds and only in the centre of the river.
Many towns along the rivers Main, Saale and Itz were already being flooded, authorities said. The Bavarian town of Coburg was especially hard hit with much of the town centre under 70 centimetres (two feet) of water.
Germany is still paying billions of euros (dollars) to repair damage caused by devastating floods that sent river levels in the east to record highs last August, swamping cities such as Dresden.
The German weather service (DWS) is forecasting more heavy rain that is likely to swell rivers further. Flooding was also reported in southern and eastern Germany.
The weather service said winds gusting up to 194 kph (118 mph) were recorded in the Black Forest.
A 13-year-old boy in the town of Freudenstadt in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg was killed and his father critically injured when a 30-metre high tree crashed onto their car.
Another 23 people in the southwestern state were injured in accidents caused by the storm, police said. Scores of roads and rail lines were closed by toppled trees and other debris.
The powerful winds knocked the roofs off of 16 houses in the Alb-Donau region of southern Germany, police said. In Loerrach near Freiburg a child was taken to hospital with injuries after being hit by a window pane flying through the air.
In the Bavarian capital city of Munich rescue crews and the fire brigade were called out more than 100 times early last week. A giant festival tent at the Oktoberfest fair grounds was blown apart by the storm.
(Additional reporting by Matthew Jones in London and Martin Roberts in Lisbon).