Budapest battles back the Danube while German dikes burst
Zoltan Simon and Nicholas Brautlecht
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Hungary’s government said it was containing the flooding Danube in Budapest, while the economic toll grew in Germany, where thousands of people have been evacuated along the overflowing Elbe River.
Hungarian authorities are “in control” of the Danube with 20,000 people including more than 7,000 soldiers working to erect barriers, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said today on the banks of the river in the Hungarian capital. Europe’s second- longest waterway reached a record level yesterday and is now receding in the capital.
“We aren’t surrendering a single dike, we’re defending everywhere,” Orban said in remarks broadcast by state-run M1 television. Parliament will today vote on Orban’s request to extend a state of emergency.
The floods, triggered by heavy rainfall, are the worst in central Europe since 2002. Overflowing rivers killed ten people in the Czech Republic and at le
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