Sirens have wailed in several locations in southern Poland as the rain has fallen, dams have burst, reservoirs have overflowed, and a number of cities and towns have been swept through by water.
In the town of Stronie Slaskie, near the border with the Czech Republic, a yellow three-story villa was swept away by rushing water masses. The town center has been transformed into a landscape of mud, with felled trees and car wrecks here and there.
It looks like after a war here, it's a tragedy, says Zdzislaw Duda, vice mayor of the nearby small town of Klodzko, to the news site Oko Press.
The waves also passed through the nearby Ladek-Zdroj, where the water flooded into numerous homes.
I've never seen anything like it, and this town has been through a lot. There used to be a bridge there, a parking lot there, and a road here, says a journalist from TVN24 in a clip where he walks around and shows the devastation.
Motorists disappeared
In Jeseník, on the other side of the border in the Czech Republic, numerous houses and cars have been swept away. The water washed away the asphalt on the streets as if it were made of gingerbread, says the town's mayor to the evening newspaper Blesk.
The rescue service in Jeseník has recovered a passenger car that was on the roof of a watercourse – but on Tuesday, they were still searching for the three people who had been sitting in it.
The damage in the Czech Republic is estimated to be in the billions of kronor.
All sidewalks are destroyed, everything has been turned upside down here, everything around the store is broken. It's a nightmare, says 76-year-old pensioner Eliska Cokreska in the town of Krnov in eastern Czech Republic to AFP.
In several places, the water is reported to have risen by over two meters.
Some houses are completely missing. We don't have an exact number yet, says Tomás Spácil, mayor of the border town of Opava, to the news site iDNES.
Continues downstream
In Austria, around 20 dams have burst and several are under surveillance. An unusually high level in the Danube has caused flooding around Vienna – and in Bratislava, just east in Slovakia.
In Böheimkirchen west of Vienna, a horse farm has been completely destroyed. Its owner Jakob Nährer tells Die Presse that there were two meters of water on the street and three meters inside his stable:
I'm speechless. Everything is gone.
Waves are still rolling downstream in the major rivers, with concerns about rapidly rising water levels in, among other places, eastern Germany, Hungary, and further north in Poland.
