9 Feared Dead as Storms Flood Austria and Germany

A 5-year-old boy swept away while trying to cross a brook was among four people feared dead in Austria’s worst floods in more than 30 years, police said Sunday. In Germany, at least five people died.

The boy was carried Saturday night toward the swollen Danube River near Linz, 90 miles west of Vienna. A companion was rescued.

Two men died when a wooden bridge collapsed into a river near Ybbsitz, in lower Austria. A third man fell into the water while repairing a landing at his riverside home.

The torrential rains began to abate Sunday after soaking the region for 60 hours.

In Vienna, the Danube reached a record height of 23 feet Sunday. Rail lines in the region were under water. Traffic on the Danube was brought to a halt, and mountain roads were cut off by landslides in Styria and Salzkammergut.

At least five people died in Bavaria, in southern Germany. The village of Passau, at the confluence of the Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers, was the most severely damaged. Firefighters built footbridges over the floodwaters to take residents to safety.

More than 100 people have died, with several thousand people left homeless, in eastern and central Europe over the last week as the rains burst dams, destroyed bridges and inundated whole villages.

Most of the deaths occurred when a dam broke near the city of Bacau in northeastern Romania.

In the Soviet Union, 16 people drowned as rains swept the region around Krasnodar and the Black Sea coast.