Flooding and icy temperatures continue to cause havoc across Europe

Snowy weather and heavy downpours have continued to cause problems across Europe.

In Denmark, snow and rain are being replaced by biting frost, with icy days making salting roads difficult. Police in East Jutland have urged people to avoid unnecessary driving.

“There are still a few cars stuck around. And we need our recovery vehicles to be able to get there. The roads are still very slippery and greasy. And now the freezing temperatures set in here in the evening hours,” said René Raffo, Police Commissioner of East Jutland Police in eastern Denmark.

“This means that it’s going to be really, really slippery under the snow,” he added.

Trains disrupted and homes evacuated in flooded UK

Residents of riverside towns in England were swamped by the rains that washed over Europe this week, as flooding disrupted train services.

A powerful storm with damaging winds inundated more than 1000 homes and businesses and left several communities under muddy brown water, officials said.

In Gloucester in southwest England, buildings and cars were submerged as streets turned to streams, farmland was flooded and boats were torn from their moorings.

The ground was already saturated after Storm Henk struck with intense rainfall.

Hundreds of flood warnings are now in place and the Environment Agency says the impact from flooding could last another five days. 

France helps Germany tackle floods

Rising floodwaters have put dykes at risk of collapse in parts of northern Germany hit by days of heavy rains.

Germany has mobilised volunteers from civil protection services. Millions of sandbags have been distributed in the flood-hit areas to protect settlements and dykes.

In a village in Lower Saxony that was particularly hard hit, help from France has arrived. 

French Civil Security workers travelled 1200 kilometres from the south of Paris to control the situation as part of the EU’s cooperation system for disaster response.

“We will build a barrier, which you can see here. This barrier will be filled with water and will be one meter high. The idea is to build a mobile dyke which will be 650 meters long, to prevent the water behind us from flooding the village,” Ludovic Penager, from France’s Civil Security Unit, explained.

Fears of frost damage in France

Temperatures are set to fall sharply in France over the next few days. Residents of the Pas-de-Calais region, who have been affected by flooding, are worried about the cold.

If the floodwaters don’t recede quickly enough, the frost could cause extensive damage to their damp homes. 

 “It’s a disaster if it freezes over. Everything will move, the walls will crack, everything. Freezing makes everything explode. That’s what cold is,” said one resident of Montreuil-sur-Mer, where people are doing their utmost to protect their homes.