
As all eyes were fixed on the Oder River in western Poland—one of two biggest rivers in the country, and efforts were underway to save major cities through which the river flows.
It was the inflows—small mountain rivers named Nysa Klodzka, Biala Ladecka, Bóbr and Morawka—that mostly devastated the picturesque tourist region in southwestern Poland amid horrendous floods following the torrential rain of Storm Boris 13-15 September.
But as Poland was bracing for the biggest catastrophe since 1997 when the so-called “flood of the millennium” killed 114 people in Poland, Czech Republic and Germany, volunteers and help, including loads of supplies and money from Catholic charities, poured in to the region to ease the pain of the people who lost everything.
Based on satellite data, an estimated 20,000 buildings may have been damaged. “It wasn’t a flood, it was a tsunami,” residents of flooded villages told OSV News 22 September as they were trying to grasp the scale of damage to their homes, only some of which survived the waves on the weekend of 14-15 September.
In Radochów alone, which has a population of about 600 people, as many as 10 houses must be demolished. More than 80 per cent of residents have been affected. The Sunday collection in Polish churches 22 September has been entirely dedicated to Caritas Poland for the flood relief.