‘We’re getting rid of everything’: floods destroy homes and lives in Czech Republic

Jarmila Šišmová did not know what to expect when rain began to pound the small town of Litovel in the Czech Republic, and she was not prepared for the nightmare that would await her once it stopped.

The authorities told Šišmová to leave her home, so she took her children to their grandmother to wait out the storm. As the water level rose, a neighbour – one of the few on her street who stayed behind – checked the front of the house and saw the sandbags holding firm. But from the back, Šišmová would soon find out, the flood had burst into the building, drenching her belongings in dirty brown water.

“It was devastating for me,” said Šišmová, a sales manager and single mother of three, gesturing to a skip full of furniture, clothes and toys. “We’re getting rid of everything.”

Stories like Šišmová’s are being echoed around the world. The Czech Republic sat at the centre of a storm that has killed two dozen people across central Europe and prompted the EU to promise €10bn in aid to flood-stricken countries. It came as torrential rains swept through parts of Africa and Asia, triggering inundations that have killed more than 1,000 people. The UK was also hit by downpours on Monday, with more than a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours in some parts of the country.

The extreme levels of rain in Europe were made twice as likely by planet-heating pollution, a rapid attribution study found on Wednesday, and 7% stronger.

Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist from the Global Change Research Institute, said a 7% average increase may not sound like a lot but can be enough to render a dam useless.

“It’s a binary problem” he said. “It’s not like flood defences partly work, they either don’t work or fully work, and there is a relatively small space in between.”

In towns along the Czech Republic’s border with Poland, where the floods hit hardest, residents described how the supercharged torrents of water tore their lives apart.

In Krnov, where three people died, the city library said it lost more than 20,000 books to the flood waters and only had enough time to save the most important volumes from its collection. Jakub Mruz, the director of the library, said the loss was “negligible” compared with what other people had experienced, but “it is sad and painful for anyone who loves books to see something like this.”

In Jesenik, where one person died, nearly 500mm of rain fell in five days, aggravated by wind patterns in the mountains and the bare slopes on which bark beetles had ravaged spongy spruce forests. The sewage system in the city failed and the flood smeared a layer of toxic mud across its streets.

“Now it’s dried up, people are breathing the dust and getting diarrhoea,” said Adriana Černá, an executive board member of People in Need, a humanitarian group working with the rescue services. “From day to day the situation is getting better. But there’s a big mess.”

Scientists have shown that warm air can hold more moisture – about 7% for each 1C increase in temperature – which allows for more violent rainfall if enough water is available.

Mountain towns such as Jesenik are particularly vulnerable. A study last year found a 15% increase in extreme rainfall per degree of warming at high altitude – double that expected by the physical relationship between temperature and moisture content.

In Litovel, further south, Petr Švancr, whose guesthouse was inundated, estimated the damage would come to 2m Czech crowns (£66,000). “The hotel’s closed, the restaurant is closed, everything is closed. My life has closed – it’s finished.”

Šišmová, who moved to Litovel 10 years ago, said she had cried in recent days because she no longer knew if she wanted to live there.

“If you have to start from zero, you can start anywhere,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to be part of another flood in a few years.”

In 1997, central Europe was devastated by what was dubbed the “flood of the century” – a disaster that killed 56 people in Poland and 50 in the Czech Republic. Since then, investments in systems to predict rain, warn communities and manage water have lowered the death toll from floods even when rains have hit hard.

But Michal Žák, a meteorologist at Czech Television, said although more rain fell over the total period in 1997 than in 2024, the one-day maximum amounts were greater in the latest disaster. “The extremity of the precipitation in the models was quite impressive,” said Žák, who had been alarmed by the projections. “I was not so sure it would really happen, but finally it did.”

Volunteers have been arriving to help clean up, with authorities asking that they register with aid groups before arrival. Václav Kvapil, a carpenter who runs a guesthouse in a village near Jesenik with his wife, said they hosted 80 volunteers for free after prospective visitors cancelled their reservations.

“We were surprised how many people wanted to come,” he said. “In the end, we were forced to refuse some people because the house was so full.”