How central Europe is recovering from days of historic floods

Good morning. Many thousands of people across central Europe are still trying to piece their sodden homes and lives back together, after Storm Boris brought an unprecedented four-day deluge earlier this month.

The waters may have retreated, but the floods exposed once again the severe costs of global heating. The growing prevalence of extreme weather events is bringing the price of the climate emergency right to our doorsteps – or in the case of the latest floods, surging right over them and into our homes.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, about what he saw when he visited the flooded out townspeople of Austria and the Czech Republic – and what this latest natural disaster tells us about the world’s preparedness for the climate emergency.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘This tragedy is not an anomaly’

The sheer scale of the recent flooding was extraordinary. As Aijt puts it, “if you imagine a map of Europe and look at the Czech Republic and Austria in the middle, surrounding that was this huge storm.”

Predicted in advance by meteorologists, there was unprecedented rain that lasted for four apocalyptic days. “Over those four days, it was the heaviest rainfall over that region we’ve seen,” says Ajit. “It unleashed these record-breaking amounts of rain onto Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia”.

He adds: “Once rain falls, if you haven’t properly adapted to it, or the amounts that fall are just too much and they overwhelm the flood defences that you have, then you have this catastrophic flooding, and that’s what we saw.”

Broadcast footage showed torrents of water surging down the streets of towns and cities, washing away everything in their path and lapping at the upper floors of buildings. One Romanian mayor described what happened to his town as “a catastrophe of epic proportions”. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes – many of whom have since returned to pick over the devastation left behind.

Ajit recalls speaking to one woman in the Czech town of Litovel, a mother of three, who was counting the costs of the disaster. “She was stood there outside her house pointing to this skip of children’s toys and furniture that had all been ruined,” he says. “She was weighing up whether she should move because she didn’t want to deal with a flood again. And that kind of psychological thing I find really hard to hear.”

The rising tide of the climate crisis

Of course, no individual event can be pinned definitively on the climate crisis. But scientists from World Weather Attribution have calculated that global heating made the extreme rainfall seen in Europe in September twice as likely. The scale of the rainfall seen had also been made 7% higher by global heating, the experts suggested.

As Bogdan Chojnicki, a climate scientist at Poznań University of Life Sciences and co-author of the study, put it, “if humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe”.

It is just the latest of a string of dire weather events, which experts are clear have become more prevalent as a result of climate change, and will continue to proliferate in the years ahead. In Europe alone this year alone, there were scorching heatwaves, causing deadly wildfires in countries including Portugal. The EU’s crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic warned last week, “Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future.”

The ‘huge success’ of adapting

Despite the devastation he has witnessed, Ajit is keen to point out that the impact of the floods could have been significantly greater, were it not for recent investment in adapting to the changing climate. A total of 24 deaths have been reported so far, he says. “That’s tragic, that’s horrific: scientists and engineers keep telling me we don’t need to be seeing this number of deaths. But it’s also worth saying that if the same flood had hit 20 years ago, it would have been much, much worse.”

Part of the explanation is improved forecasting. “The huge success story is the early warning systems: from climate scientists getting better at predicting where rain will fall, how much, when, through to setting up the systems to that when they realise there’s a problem coming, they communicate that to the local authorities, the fire services. They can then evacuate people who need to evacuate.”

Some of the worst-hit countries have also invested heavily in flood defences, however – including a major project to store water around Vienna, rather than let it inundate the city.

Fear of another flood

Ajit stresses that while great strides have been made in some countries, the scale of the challenge ahead in adapting to the rapidly changing climate is immense. “The levels of investment that we’ve seen so far, they’ve saved so many lives, but there are so many more lives they could save.”

As well as building flood defences, that will have to mean calling a halt to development on flood plains. “We’re settling and building on areas that previously had been left to nature, and where if there were a flood it wouldn’t hurt anyone because there wasn’t anyone there,” Ajit says.

Of course, by far the bigger prize would come from halting the fossil fuel pollution that is driving the crisis in the first place.

“Some extreme weather events are locked in – coastal flooding is just going to get worse and worse even if we stopped all greenhouse gas pollution tomorrow,” says Ajit. “But with a lot of other extreme weather events it is quite pegged to cumulative emissions. So if we stopped doing things now, it would stop things getting even worse.”

Yet he is not convinced that even catastrophic events such as Storm Boris are acting as a wake up call for politicians and the public. “I think we haven’t seen strong evidence of that happening in the rich world yet.”

Meanwhile, as flood-hit families survey their ruined belongings, he says, “the sense of uncertainty, the apprehension, the anxiety that this is going to happen again, or maybe it’s going to get worse – all of these thoughts are just circling around in so many people’s heads.”

For more from Ajit on his reporting of the floods, sign up here to get Down to Earth, the Guardian’s climate newsletter, later today

What else we’ve been reading

There is ample evidence that shows the two-child benefit cap is a key driver of child poverty and abolishing it the most cost-effective way of lifting hundreds of thousands of children over the poverty line. In this striking article, Amelia Gentleman spoke with two parents about how the punitive, austerity era policy changed their lives. Nimo

“No one wants to leave his country if they are safe” – this compelling piece by Amy Hawkins tells some of the human stories behind the growing phenomenon of Chinese migrants trying to escape political repression at home, in this case by heading for the Balkans. Heather

Datacentres are springing up across Latin America to meet the “expanding needs of the digital world”, Thomas Graham writes. In Querétaro, locals are worried about the impact of the resource-heavy centres on the already scarce water supply and the changing climate. Nimo

“We are essentially devoted to the study of what you would now call memes” – Oliver Wainwright celebrates a makeover for “the world’s weirdest library”, the Warburg Institute, in this intriguing piece, which made me want to go and take a look for myself. Heather

The enduring friendship between actor Will Ferrell and former Saturday Night Live head writer Harper Steele is front and centre in a new Netflix documentary in which the pair embark on a roadtrip after Steel came out as transgender at 61. Guy Lodge’s interview with them is a demonstration of the humanity that anchors the documentary, during a time when trans-rights in many states across the US are under threat. Nimo

Sport

Football | Manchester United were left to rue another frustrating result, this time held by FC Twente to a 1-1 draw at home in their Europa League opener, with Christian Eriksen going from scoring hero to culprit. The 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri scored a double on his full debut as Arsenal put five past Bolton in the Carabao Cup. Liverpool came from behind to rout West Ham 5-1, with two goals each from Diogo Jota and Cody Gakpo.

London Marathon | The London Marathon raised a record £73.5m ($98.28m) for charity, race organisers said on Wednesday in what they described as the world’s largest annual one-day fundraising event. The collection surpassed the previous world record of £66.4m, set in 2019, on 21 April when more than 53,000 runners completed the 44th London Marathon.

Football | Premier League executives are to gather for the first time today since the hearing began into Manchester City’s alleged 130 breaches of league rules. The so-called “trial of the century”, concerning allegations that span nine seasons and which accuse City of deliberately withholding information from the competition of which they have been champions in six of the past seven years – they deny all charges – will undoubtedly be of concern to clubs, even if it is not expected to reach a conclusion for months.

The front pages

The Guardian leads with “Israel warns of Lebanon ground offensive as ceasefire calls grow”. The Telegraph says “Israeli boots ready to hit the ground in Lebanon” and the i reports “UK tells Netanyahu to step back from brink as Israel prepares for invasion”.

The Financial Times says “Starmer clears way to spending boost as OECD urges rewrite of fiscal rules”. The Times has “Inmates to win points for shorter jail terms”.

The Mirror splashes with “Mum of 5 dies after butt lift treatment”. The Sun has “Maddie suspect – I did snatch child”.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

The bottom of the ocean is lined with a lot of treasure. Underwater archaeologist Mensun Bound, who was the director of exploration on the team that discovered Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, has written a new book tracing the world’s maritime history through shipwrecked objects he has found over the course of his career. The items span thousands of years and range vastly: from 50kg of 16th century gold to a cannon fired in the Battle of Trafalgar – the only known cannon in existence proven to have been fired during the most famous sea battle there has ever been. Bound is also one of the only experts to have seen an ancient bronze helmet from 600BC in person.

“It was made using superb metalwork skills, which we simply couldn’t do ourselves today,” he says. The helmet has since gone missing and no one knows it’s whereabouts. And finally, in an almost miraculous discovery, Bound found a Bible from the Endurance ship that was still in relatively good condition. He still finds it “amazing” that all 28 of the crew survived that shipwreck, and the Bible did too. “It should not have happened,” he says.

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