UK tourists in Portugal and Poland warned 'this is the new reality'

UK tourists in Portugal and Poland warned 'this is the new reality'
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


Floods in Poland and wildfires in Portugal show the reality of climate breakdown, UK tourists have been warned by the European Union. More than five times the average rainfall for the whole of September has fallen in five days on swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

Austria has tripled its federal disaster fund to €1bn (£840m), the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said on Wednesday, describing the past few days as “enormously challenging” and causing “great suffering and unimaginable destruction”.

Seven people have died in Poland, seven in Romania, five in Austria and three in the Czech Republic, officials said on Wednesday, with several reported missing, as Storm Boris moved steadily westward to start threatening northern Italy.

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In Strasbourg, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, Janez Lenarčič, said the flooding in central Europe, combined with this week’s deadly forest fires in Portugal, were joint proof of climate breakdown.

“Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future,” Lenarčič told MEPs. “Europe is the fastest warming continent globally and is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.”

“We face a Europe that is simultaneously flooding and burning. These extreme weather events ... are now an almost annual occurrence,” he said. “The global reality of the climate breakdown has moved into the everyday lives of Europeans.”

Near the border between Poland and the Czech Republic, one of the hardest-hit areas, 2,000 volunteers from the Polish town of Nysa’s population of 44,000 spent Monday night helping rescue workers build up a burst river embankment.

“Please evacuate your belongings, yourselves, your loved ones. It is worth getting to the top floor of the building immediately, because the wave may be several metres high,” the town’s mayor, Kordian Kolbiarz, had told residents on Monday night.