BUCHAREST - Torrential rains battered western Romania, flooding thousands of homes and disrupting rail and road traffic in what local officials said were the worst floods in 50 years.
The Environment Ministry said worst hit was Timis county, on the border with Serbia and Montenegro, where 2,500 houses and 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of crops were destroyed by floodwaters.
The local government put the army on flood alert as many villages came under nearly 2 metres (7 feet) of water.
The government had yet to assess the damage, but there were no reports of any human casualties.
"The situation is much worse than the authorities had been aware of," deputy Environment Minister Lucia Varga said after she was flown in a helicopter over the affected regions.
Forecasters said bad weather was likely to continue at the weekend and that people should be on the lookout for possible landslides.
The government granted 5.6 billion lei ($202,200) in emergency food and basic supplies to 2,000 villagers who had been evacuated.
But many others, risking their lives, preferred to sleep in the lofts of their clay-built houses for fear of looting.
In the city of Arad, near the border with Hungary, hundreds of communist-era apartment blocks and streets were flooded and stranded residents used rubber boats to get around.
In neighbouring Serbia and Montenegro, hundreds of homes were flooded and dozens of livestock drowned in a village on Thursday. Most of the 3,000 residents of Jasa Tomic fled to nearby towns.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
