- X says Brazil service restoration 'inadvertent' and 'temporary'
- Amazon drought leaves Colombian border town high and dry
- Some Cubans depend on sugar water as food shortages bite
- Saudi crown prince says no Israel ties without Palestinian state
- Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits
- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
- Hidden talent: French Olympic star Marchand opts for disguise
- MrBeast named in California lawsuit over 'Beast Games' show
- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Struggling Roma replace sacked icon De Rossi with Ivan Juric
- Women's NBA will add 15th team in Portland in 2026
- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
- Snapchat pushes 'safer' platform image, but not everyone agrees
- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
- So where does the oceans' plastic waste come from?
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
CMSC | 0.02% | 25.055 | $ | |
AZN | 0.06% | 78.58 | $ | |
GSK | -0.31% | 42.43 | $ | |
NGG | -0.46% | 70.05 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.12% | 24.98 | $ | |
RELX | -0.82% | 47.37 | $ | |
SCS | 0.71% | 14.11 | $ | |
RIO | -0.02% | 62.91 | $ | |
BP | -0.37% | 32.43 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.37% | 6.55 | $ | |
VOD | 0.49% | 10.23 | $ | |
BCC | 1.33% | 137.06 | $ | |
BCE | 3.09% | 35.61 | $ | |
JRI | 0.45% | 13.44 | $ | |
BTI | -0.34% | 37.88 | $ |
Czech city awaits the inevitable as floodwave looms
The sun was shining and the sky was bright blue with just a few white clouds, but in downtown Opava in the Czech Republic, most people only talked about the weather with concerned frowns.
Local people gathered on bridges and the embankment in the city centre to watch the eponymous Opava river gradually rise level with the banks, fed by heavy rain that started on Friday and only stopped on Sunday morning.
Police vans and fire trucks blocked roads to the local Katerinky housing estate, from which thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate on Saturday.
Standing outside a prefab block of flats with a friend, purchase manager Marie Lasak Blokesova assessed the situation, reflecting on the devastating floods that hit the region in 1997.
Back then, floodwater killed 50 people and caused damage worth $3 billion -- especially in the eastern parts of the Czech Republic, an EU country of 10.9 million people.
"Since we all expected this, I hope everyone is as ready as we are, and since we had already experienced the 1997 flood, we are basically just waiting," Lasak Blokesova told AFP.
"We had enough information suggesting what will come. These days with Facebook and Instagram, you know what is happening around you and so you can calm down a bit in that you know what's going on."
The water kept rising as she watched -- a car park where cars were safe at 9:30 (0730 GMT) was covered with water reaching above the sills an hour later.
"My boyfriend has recalled the 1997 flood so we have made stocks of drinking water and prepared a camping gas cooker in case they switched off gas and electricity," said Lasak Blokesova.
"We also recharged all the electrical devices we have and we are hoping we just won't need this all."
- Evacuate or not? -
Since Friday, over 10,000 people have been evacuated across the Czech Republic.
More than 250,000 households were without electricity on Sunday, four people were reported missing and firefighters had attended almost 15,000 incidents.
In Opava, several people braved the high water in the street on foot, many in Wellington boots.
Some even rode bicycles through the floodwater, while one maverick driver rode his Volkswagen into the waves before changing his mind and returning in a U-turn.
Some in the upper stories watched out of their windows -- deaf to the firefighters' pleas to evacuate.
Dustbins and containers floated freely along the Opava, navigating between flooded bus stops and road signs.
- 'Watching this in horror' -
The river in Opava, a city some 240 kilometres (150 miles) east of the Czech capital Prague, was expected to culminate at around 1700 GMT on Sunday, forecasters said.
Twenty kilometres upstream, the city of Krnov was 80-percent flooded by 1230 GMT, said its deputy mayor Miroslav Binar.
In Velke Hostice -- a village about five kilometres down the stream from Opava -- local volunteers were frantically trying to perfect an improvised wall of sandbags stretching for 500 metres (550 yards) on a jetty built after the 1997 floods for protection.
Visibly tired, local hunter Jaroslav Lexa told AFP the men had worked on the sandbag barrier until 1:00 am on Saturday night, and resumed work at 7:00 am on Sunday, patching holes in the impressive work.
"I'm watching this in horror. If we don't stop the wave, it will flood the lower part of the village," he said.
M.Ouellet--BTB