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Floods in Dresden

In August of 2002 a 100-year flood caused by over a week of continuous heavy rains ravaged Europe, killing dozens, dispossessing thousands, and causing damage of billions of euros in the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Croatia.

The floods first started with heavy rainfall in the Eastern Alps, which resulted in floods in Northern Italy, Bavaria and the Austrian states of Salzburg and Upper Austria. The floods gradually moved eastwards along the Danube, although the damage in the large cities on its shores was not as severe as in the areas affected by the floods later. In some cases, damage was averted by good flood defense systems (for example, there was virtually no damage in Vienna in spite of the Danube's reaching a record water level).

When the rainfall moved northeast to the Bohemian Forest and to the source areas of the Elbe and Vltava rivers, the result were catastrophic water levels first in the Austrian areas of Mühlviertel and Waldviertel and later in the Czech Republic, Thuringia and Saxony. Rivers changed their courses in unexpected ways, catching residents off guard. Several villages in Northern Bohemia, Thuringia and Saxony were more or less destroyed by rivers changing their courses.

Flood damage in the Karlin district of Prague.

The two large cities most severely hit were Dresden and Prague, in both of which large parts of the old town were under water and numerous historic buildings were damaged. The Prague Metro subway system tunnels were nearly complete flooded. Some in the Czech Republic blamed the severity of the flooding (which also caused catastrophic damage to the historic town of Český Krumlov) on mismanagement of reservoirs in the upper part of the Vltava but the blame was misplaced - the volumes that passed through were much larger than the capacity of the dams [1].

Flooding in Budapest.

• Flood damage at the Jewish Museum in Prague
• Flood Photographs of Prague