Image: FF Schärding
“The task force has already met and mobile protection is being set up,” the city of Schärding announced in the evening before the sirens wailed. “The water level will continue to rise during the night,” predicts the Hydrographic Service of the State of Upper Austria. The experts expect a maximum value by Tuesday noon, and the level of the Inn should rise to 750 centimeters by then. For classification: On Monday afternoon, the level of the Inn in Schärding was still 361 centimeters.
The inland areas, the ship landing stage car park and the Leonhard-Kaiser-Weg were closed to traffic. The emergency services also expect the Old Inn Bridge and other streets in the city to be closed during the night.
Five to ten year floods
On the Danube in Linz, Mauthausen and Achleiten, the warning limits are expected to be exceeded during the night hours. In Linz, the level could rise from 398 centimeters to more than 630 centimeters. 610 centimeters are expected in Mauthausen, 640 centimeters in Achleiten. “From the current perspective, the flood wave on the Inn and Danube can be classified as a five to ten-year event,” said the Hydrographic Service.
Pictures from the Innviertel:
“Ordinary wave from Bavaria and Tyrol”
The situation continued to deteriorate over the course of the day: it was 38 liters in twelve hours by Monday afternoon in Mattighofen, and Braunau got 34 liters per square meter. A lot of rain in a short period of time, but nothing like the masses that hit the country in early August. And yet Upper Austria also had to prepare for a flood. Because a “proper wave” is being transported from Bavaria and Tyrol, said Alexander Ohms, meteorologist at Geosphere Austria. This wave will mainly hit Schärding, said Ohms to the OÖN. In the afternoon, at 3 p.m. sharp, the first phase of flood protection was already heralded.
Especially in the Innviertel and in the Salzkammergut, where the largest amounts of rain are expected for Tuesday night, small bodies of water can burst their banks and cause small-scale, locally limited flooding. The fire brigades in the Braunau district were already busy minimizing the consequences of these events from midday on Monday. On Monday afternoon, the fire brigade was deployed around 50 times throughout the state to deal with storm damage.
Source: Nachrichten
