Ten more villages evacuated in Germany as River Elbe surges

As the surge from the Elbe pushed into rural eastern Germany, there was some relief further upstream as the river slipped back from record levels in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt state.

To the south, the Danube hit a record high on Sunday evening in Budapest, then began to ease. The city escaped significant damage, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban said soldiers and rescue workers would shift their focus further south.

Weeks of heavy rain in spring have made the Elbe, the Danube and other rivers such as the Vltava and the Saale overflow, causing extensive damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. At least 21 flood-related deaths have been reported.

The German city of Magdeburg grappled over the weekend with water levels more than 16 feet above normal, although the Elbe had later retreated by about a foot. More than 23,000 people had to leave their homes.

But further downstream, a levee at Fischbeck, west of Berlin, was breached overnight on Sunday, prompting officials to evacuate 10 villages in the area.

Germany’s national railway had to close a bridge near Fischbeck on the line from Berlin to Cologne, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. I

Soldiers and volunteers have worked frantically for a week to fill sandbags and reinforce flood defences across central Europe. Even with all those efforts, “we should accept that even in the 21st century we don’t completely control nature”, Saxony-Anhalt’s interior minister Holger Stahlknecht said.