A man and a bicycle floated down the Úslava River in the Pilsen region on Friday. It’s not clear how he got into the swollen river. After a while, the man pulled the bike out of the water, mounted it, and rode away.
The Czech Republic was hit by severe thunderstorms on Thursday evening and overnight, which kept firefighters and power companies busy and raised river levels. A total of 10,500 households were still without power before noon, rising to nearly 70,000 at night.
The weather also caused problems on the railways. The storms and heavy rain raised several smaller streams to flood levels, with the Úslava in the Pilsen Region and the Novohradka in the Pardubice region reaching the third level of danger.
Firefighters across the country responded to more than 1,220 incidents from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, clearing fallen trees, pumping water from basements and underpasses and evacuating children’s camps.
Most of the interventions were in the South Bohemia, Pardubice, Central Bohemia, Pilsen and Hradec Králové regions, in Vysočina and in Prague. The number of interventions increased several times; the five-year average of the number of interventions per day is 345.