Floods after heavy rains have led to dramatic situations in Slovenia and southern Austria. Railway tracks and motorways were flooded in Slovenia on Friday. Civil protection workers had to save people from the floods, sometimes with the help of helicopters. Among other things, a psychiatric hospital in Begunje in northern Slovenia – near the border with Austria – was evacuated because the basement and ground floor there were flooded. The patients were transferred to other facilities.
In Skofja Loka, 20 kilometers northwest of Ljubljana, many buildings were flooded. Roads were flooded and impassable. Flooding and roadblocks occurred throughout the Gorenjska (Upper Carniola) region, which borders Austria to the north.
There was no relief in sight on Friday evening either. Meteorologists warned of new heavy rain. Authorities triggered disaster alarms in some municipalities and in St. Paul im Lavanttal in Lower Carinthia 70 houses were evacuated in the evening as a precaution. The residents were asked to temporarily go to friends and relatives with the most necessary things. Emergency accommodation was set up in a public facility.
According to the ÖAMTC motorists’ club, numerous border crossings between Austria and Slovenia were closed due to flooding and mud and debris avalanches – including the Loibl Pass, where almost 200 liters of rain per square meter fell on Friday night. The only alternative route was the Karawanken tunnel.
The heavy precipitation led to mudslides and flooding in southern Austria. According to the authorities, a civil defense alarm was declared in parts of Styria and Carinthia. Carinthia is a popular holiday region in Austria. It advertises itself as a location “on the sunny south side of the Alps”. In the past few weeks, however, thunderstorms have swept across the state, which borders Italy and Slovenia, almost every day.
In the areas around Eisenkappel and Klagenfurt, some places were cut off from the area on Friday morning. In addition to the fire brigade, the army also deployed to fill sandbags. The district of Völkermarkt in Carinthia was particularly affected. The authorities there called on people to only make absolutely necessary trips with their cars. In St. Paul in Carinthian Lavanttal, citizens were asked not to go into the basement, stay on the upper floors and avoid bridges.
Slovenia’s neighbor Croatia put its emergency services on alert because of fears that the floods would spread. In the north of the country, the water levels of the rivers rose sharply.
Relief was not in sight for the time being. Austria’s state weather institute Geosphere Austria warned that the low pressure area over Italy would bring further large amounts of rain of up to 60 liters per square meter during the night and on Saturday. “More floods and mudslides are therefore to be expected, especially in the south of Austria, since the soil has already been saturated by recent rain,” said Geosphere meteorologist Hannes Rieder.
