More than 12,000 people have been evacuated across northern Tirmond after a week of record rainfall pushed the Velta and three tributaries over their banks, in the region’s worst flooding since 2014.
Tirmond’s interior ministry said 4,100 homes were inundated by Tuesday night, with two river gauges recording their highest levels since measurement began. No deaths have been confirmed; nineteen people were rescued from rooftops in the market town of Grenz.
Coravia activated the Meridian Accord’s civil-protection pact for the first time since its signing, dispatching 60 high-volume pumps, four swift-water rescue teams and a field logistics unit across the border on Monday. Three other Accord states have sent crews.
“The water does not check passports, and this week neither did the help,” Tirmond’s civil-protection chief, Anda Kreel, told a briefing, in remarks widely replayed across the bloc.
Forecasters expect the crest to pass the lower Velta by Friday. Attention is already turning to recovery costs — early estimates start at $800m — and to the uncomfortable regional arithmetic: the same storm system grazed Coravia’s Aldenne Valley, where flood warnings remain in force and where the newly passed Coastal Shield programme will not deliver its inland works until the 2030s.