Deadly Storms Lash Europe

Rain storms soaked much of central and eastern Europe on Monday and Tuesday, wreaking havoc in Germany and many neighboring countries and bringing the storm-related death toll over the past week to more than 70.

In Germany, at least three people died in storm-related accidents on Monday and authorities are still tallying the numbers of missing people in the hard-hit states of Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria. States of emergency have been declared in each of these states.

The German Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday morning that 1,500 soldiers have been engaged to fight the floods, with thousands more on stand-by should the situation worsen. The soldiers are filling sandbags and erecting diversion walls in areas where the flood risk is high.

Flooding in Dresden forced authorities to begin evacuations early Tuesday. Some streets stood 75 centimeters (29.5 inches) under water. In the Bavarian city of Passau, the Donau climbed to 10.5 meters (34.4 feet) and much of the downtown area was flooded. Authorities estimated that the river would climb to 10.7 meters, the highest level since 1954.

The German storm-related deaths include an 8-year-old Munich girl who died after being hit by a falling tree; a police officer who died in an accident on the way to flood-related duty; and a Dresden woman who collapsed after bailing out her flooded basement.

Eastern Europe especially hard hit

In Prague, a few hundred kilometers toward the east of Dresden, approximately 40,000 residents were evacuated because of flooding along the Vlatva River. Soldiers were stationed in the evacuated areas to discourage vandalism.

The flooding is said to be the worst in at least 100 years, and Prague Mayor Igor Nemec said experts feared the Vlatva may burst its banks later on Tuesday.

Czech authorties reported that at least 7 Czechs have died in the storms. Prague and four other regions of the country have been declared states of emergency.

In Austria, much of the country was under water on Tuesday after several rivers overflowed, flooding town and closing highways and railways. Authorities said at least four people have died in the storms, including a fireman who drowned after his car sank into a water-logged field.

The storms also hit Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland and followed heavy storms that hit Russia’s Black Sea coast late last week, claiming at least 58 lives as roads, bridges and houses collapsed. This week, rescue crews were hard at work, looking for survivors along the 4,000 square meters (13,123 square feet) of collapsed coastline.

Environment minister: industrialization is to blame

German Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin (Greens) blamed the flooding on what he called "the results of 100 years of industrialization." He said international efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions have been insufficient and called for greater focus on this issue.

Under the Kyoto pact, Germany agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 21 percent and has already reduced it by 19 percent. "In this area we are way out front," Trittin said, as he called for other countries to place similar focus on climate protection.

Weather forecasters said hard rain would continue on Tuesday before it turned to scattered showers on Wednesday. But even this change of weather might not bring flood relief, experts warned. "The flooding will really hit after the weather improves in the middle of the week," said a spokesman for the German Weather Service in Frankfurt.