POLAND: Severe winter weather wreaked havoc across Europe yesterday, with nearly 200 people freezing to death in Poland, two killed by storms in Germany and floods threatening several European countries. Most of the 183 victims of Poland's bitterly-cold winter were men who died of hypothermia after drinking heavily and falling sleep outside, police said.
Floods washed out parts of southern Belgium, took out Czech railways, and threatened northern Portugal, after rains and winds whipped up across western and central Europe overnight.
In Slovakia, a 51-year-old woman was killed and 15 injured, including four seriously, when the bus they were riding in spun out of control in high winds and crashed into a hillside. Officials in Germany said two people were killed and more than 20 injured by the severe weather.
In southern Germany, a 13-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a car being driven by his father, who was seriously injured. An 18-year-old driver also died when his vehicle crashed on a snowy highway in Henstedt-Ulzburg, northern Germany.
Makeshift sandbag barriers were erected to defend towns and houses, but the Rhine was close to nine metres in the western city of Cologne and was expected to reach 10.6 metres today, only 40 centimetres before it would spill into Cologne's historic centre.
Rivers in other parts of Germany including the Danube, the Elbe, the Weser and the Mosel also flooded large areas, cutting off roads and shipping.
Storms also swept through Switzerland overnight, injuring at least seven people. Four were injured near the capital Bern when a tree fell on their car, and two more received light injuries near Zurich. The seventh person was hit in Bern by a flying sheet of corrugated iron propelled by the winds.
Government officials in the resort town of Davos also put out avalanche warnings for the Alps, where warmer temperatures combined with fierce winds turned ice ledges into potentially deadly risks. Bern authorities said at least €2.7 million would be needed to clean up their canton alone.
In Italy, a third of Venice was flooded, including the famed Saint Mark's Square.
In northeastern Czech Republic, a train jumped the tracks late Thursday after hitting a tree which had fallen across the tracks, but no injuries were reported, the Czech railway company CD said Friday.
Mudslides also shut down some 20 rail lines throughout the central European country, and a number of regions went on high alert after waters rose in the Vltava and other Czech rivers.
Meanwhile in Belgium, rivers burst their banks, and major flooding was reported in the southern Ardennes forest.
In Portugal, also besieged by floodwaters, rescue workers searched the northern Douro river for up to three cars thought to have been swept away after a landslide.
All the inhabitants of a South Pacific island battered by a fierce cyclone have survived by fleeing to mountain shelters, according to a photographer who has landed on the island. - (AFP)