Flooding in Poland: Wroclaw braces for the big flood wave

The shovel makes a metallic sound as it scrapes over the ground. Almost all the sand is gone; soon there will be just pebbles left. Every grain of sand counts.
Kasia Piskorek puffs with exertion as she hoists the heavy sandbag onto a wheelbarrow, then wipes the perspiration off her forehead with the back of her hand. The young woman tells DW that she is relieved that she got any sand at all.
Piskorek wants to protect her home in the city of Wroclaw in southwestern Poland. Her house is in an idyllically quiet, green part of the city that is almost entirely surrounded by two arms of the Oder river, which could merge to form a huge lake as floodwaters continue to rise.
The city made 26 tons of sand available free of charge and delivered it to a former streetcar depot, which is now used as a culture center.
The sand for the city’s residents is just one of several measures, explains coordinator Adela Jakielaszek from the NGO Tratwa.
Sand is not the only thing available at the former depot: There is also relief aid for the flood victims that was collected in the mountainous regions of Lower Silesia.
Cities and towns such as Klodzko, Ladek-Zdroj and Glucholazy — all in southwestern Poland — have been particularly badly hit by the floods. Bridges were washed away, the old parts of the towns were inundated, people were made homeless overnight. Some people are missing; some have lost their lives.
“People from all over Poland are trying to help and have contacted us,” says Jakielaszek. There is certainly no shortage of helpers here. Over 200 volunteers offered their assistance on Monday.
One of them is Pranav Kelkar. The 25-year-old from India came to study in Poland three years ago and now works for an IT company. Yesterday, he was shoveling sand into bags to help potential victims of the flood.
“The pictures from the flooded regions in Lower Silesia were horrifying,” he tells DW. Kelkar says that while he is a little nervous, he is above all agitated. In less than an hour, the sand is gone.
Four days ahead of the expected flood peak, Wroclaw is in a strange state that can best be described as a mixture of panic, hope, general agitation and — for the moment at least — curiosity.
Many have come to the city’s numerous bridges or to the riverbanks to see for themselves how high the water level is. And it is rising. Relentlessly.
The torrential rainfall that has left a trail of destruction in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Austria and Hungary is expected to reach Wroclaw sometime between Wednesday evening and Friday morning.
People in the city are very afraid, in particular because the city is situated on the Oder, at a point where several tributaries — including the Olawa, the Widawa and the Sleza — meet.
When the flood wave comes, it is highly likely that several districts will be flooded, even if “only” by the rising groundwater.
At about 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, the first major flood wave reached the city of Klodzko on the Eastern Neisse river. Now that the water level has dropped there, the full extent of the devastation is apparent.
Images of what the flood did to Klodzko are what make the people of Wroclaw, which has a population of just under 700,000, so nervous. The awful memories of the 100-year flood that struck the city in 1997 and the major flood of 2010 are still all too vivid.
On Sunday evening, Jacek Sutryk, the mayor of Wroclaw, issued the highest flood warning level available. “I would prefer to be prepared for the worst rather than for too little,” he said at a press conference.
The city authorities have also warned citizens about false information in circulation. Posting on X, they said that it was not true that river dykes would be blown up, that tap water in the city was poisoned or that “thousands of people would be forcibly evacuated.” The city appealed to citizens to only trust information from official sources.
Also on Sunday night, the authorities began to reinforce the barriers in particularly sensitive areas with sandbags. Scaffolding was removed from bridges that are being repaired.
Another measure introduced on Monday was the opening of an official center where people could fill sandbags for the protection of private property. Even before it opened at midday, the traffic situation was chaotic. “We put a diversion in place. People only had to wait patiently in line. But they completely panicked. It’s pure chaos,” said one staff member.
The yard is a hive of activity: People are everywhere, busily clambering over mounds of sand and hauling sandbags to their cars. Among them are two nuns, who want to protect their convent.
“I hope we learned our lesson after 1997,” says Ania Kozok, who runs a local daycare center. “I hope we’ve done our homework.” She intends to use the sandbags to protect the entrance to her daycare facility.
Antoni Wysnul is 15 years of age. He asked to be excused from school to help out as a volunteer. He tirelessly shovels sand into bags and hoists them onto shopping carts and hand trucks from the nearby DIY store and into the trunks of waiting cars. “There just isn’t enough sand,” he says. “We’d need at least four times as much.”
After the continuous rain of the past few days, the sun was unexpectedly strong on Monday afternoon. The rain that was forecast for Monday never came. The people continue to fill sandbags all the same.
Because of the flood situation, the last remaining beach bars on the banks of the river have closed for the season. These bars spread sand out on the riverbanks in the summer months to create artificial beaches and attract customers.
Now their owners are posting on social media that people can come and take the sand, which would otherwise be swept away by the floodwaters. In this way, it can at least be used to help protect the property of some locals.
Evening quickly draws in. Two men have come to the place where a beach bar once stood and are shoveling sand into bags and loading them onto a trailer.
“There are too few helping hands,” they say. “People are looking after themselves. But we want to protect our school from the flood.”
Parents with children in strollers, joggers, cyclists, people who are curious, people who are worried … many residents are drawn to the river over the course of the day.
Some, like Joanna Kalczewska, came several times on Monday: “I was here early this morning. There was a little less water then. But above all, the current was not as strong as it is now,” she tells DW.
The concern in her voice is unmistakable. She fervently hopes that the situation will not be as catastrophic as it was in 1997.
Night falls over Wroclaw. Many residents can’t sleep. People are still coming to the river in the early hours of the morning. They want to know how high the water is. And they hope that the predicted flood wave will not be as devastating as anticipated.
During the night, water is released from a storage reservoir near Mietkow southwest of Wroclaw into the Bystrzyca river. This leads to the flooding of the Marszowice housing scheme in the northwest of the city hours later.
Since then, the military has been reinforcing the barriers in the housing estate with sandbags. And this, even before the anticipated flood wave arrives.
This article was originally published in German.