Boats, diggers and amphibious vehicle used to evacuate flooded Polish town

Flood waters continued to rise in the Polish town of Lewin Brzeski, around 60 kilometres south of Wroclaw. Townspeople waded through water that was up to their waist in some places, while others moved through the streets on rafts as emergency services took them to safety. Firefighters and military personnel used amphibious vehicles, diggers, boats and dinghies to carry people out of the flooded areas. "I live down there, there is about 1.1-1.2 metres of water on the courtyard and it is rising all the time," said Marek Karas, 63, adding that he thought not enough had been done to protect the area from flooding since a severe deluge in 1997. "In 27 years they haven't done much in this section, all those who governed up to now, there are not enough storage reservoirs," he added. Poland's Minister for Funds and Regional Development, Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz, said 1.5 billion zlotys ($390.46 million) from Poland's European Union funds would be redirected to reconstruction, with another 3.5 billion zlotys potentially allocated to building embankments, reservoirs and dams. The deluge has left a trail of destruction from Romania to Poland, and while waters were receding in many areas, others were nervously waiting for rivers to burst their banks. The Czech-Polish border areas are among the worst-hit since the weekend, as gushing, debris-filled rivers devastated historic towns, collapsing bridges and destroying houses. Polish authorities have filled 80% of a giant reservoir near the Czech border, aimed at cutting water levels and preventing flood peaks from coinciding on the Oder and Nysa Klodzka rivers, as happened in the disastrous 1997 floods in Wroclaw. (Production: Janis Laizans, Kacper Pempel, Malgorzata Wojtunik)