Kindgo
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Weekend News Today
Lead: Faith
Source: FOX News/AP
Fri Aug 9,2002 -- Rescue workers Friday found the bodies of 19 people swept away by rushing water near Russia's Black Sea coast after some of Europe's worst flooding in decades turned rivers and streets into torrents. At least 27 people died, 21 of them in Russia. Thursday's heavy rains forced the evacuation of at least 600 people, destroyed at least 20 homes and damaged 70 others in 8 villages near Novorossiisk.
More evacuations were taking place in other areas as a new rain and windstorm Friday, threatening more flooding. Floods also cut rail links and power, damaged roads and washed away bridges. Cars were swept into the sea by rising lake waters in what residents described as the worst rains many could remember. Heavy rain were expected to fall again in the area within the next 2 days.
Forecasters in Austria, where Austrian radio quoted authorities as saying the waters were receding, also warned more rain was expected to soak the hardest-hit areas this weekend. Vast parts of the provinces of Upper Austria and Lower Austria remained under water. "I've never seen anything like it -- the entire region is one big lake," Josef Puehringer, the governor of Lower Austria, told Austrian television. The province's hydrological service called it the worst flooding since records began being kept in 1896.
Thankfully water levels in the swollen Danube River were falling Friday, easing the threat of flooding in Vienna. Rescuers used helicopters and cranes to lift people from roofs where they had sought refuge from strong currents that cut off several low-lying villages in the northern Waldviertel area of Lower Austria.
In the scenic Danube tourist town of Krems, flood waters turned cobblestone streets into raging rivers. And in Lower Austria's flooded Kamp River valley, which was nearly wiped out in a 1959 flood -- was this time completely under water Friday. Employees were working to salvage its sophisticated computer technology.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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