Residents in the oldest part of Switzerland’s capital Bern were kept away from their homes on Friday due to fears buildings could be swept away by surging waters after a week of heavy rain and flooding.
The worst of the flooding, which killed more than 40 people across Europe, was over by Friday but Bern police spokesman Franz Maerki said there were concerns that flood waters from brimming lakes upstream could wreck centuries-old buildings.
“Engineers will have to see that those buildings do not collapse,” Maerki said.
Pensioners in the village of Klosters were holed up in a hotel after their care home was flooded and hundreds of tourists in the mountain resort of Engelberg spent a fifth day cut off from the rest of Switzerland.
'Cleanup has now begun'
But although moderate rain was forecast for the weekend, Maerki said the worst was over.
“The phase of rescue is now over. The cleanup has now begun,” he said.
Lakes and rivers have burst their banks from Bern to Bucharest, blocking roads and railways and cutting power and communications to hundreds of communities and causing damage estimated at well over $1 billion in Switzerland alone.
As the worst of the rain subsided, police and civilian volunteers started on Friday to clear wrecked cars and driftwood that were blocking rivers.
In the eastern Swiss canton of Grisons, volunteers used trucks and excavators to shift deep piles of mud from streets and houses left behind by the flood waters.
More than 30 people have died in Romania while nine died in Switzerland and Austria. One young man drowned in Germany on Wednesday when out with two friends in a dinghy.
Tons of mud
In Austria, volunteers with shovels and emergency crews with heavy equipment were clearing tons of mud, gravel and rocks from buildings in mountain towns across Austria’s two westernmost provinces, Tyrol and Vorarlberg.
The government estimates the flood damage at hundreds of million of euros.
“We are in a living-room and we are standing on stones,” one fireman in the ski resort of Ischgl told the Austrian news agency APA.
In southern Germany, with no rain forecast for the next few days, Bavarian authorities expect the situation to ease although flood waters are approaching the city of Regensburg on the River Danube and are only expected to recede in the evening.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said it had reopened some routes, but the flood waters had been so severe in places they had swept away rail escarpments. Some 200 kilometers of track have been closed since Monday.