Europeans begin flood clear-up

Saturday, August 27, 2005; Posted: 10:22 a.m. EDT (14:22 GMT)

A volunteer shovels mud from a living room in Klosters, Switzerland.

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Residents, business owners begin clearing up (1:30)

Central Europe hit by worst floods for years (2:08)

• Gallery: Floods devastate Europe

• Romania floods toll rises to 18

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BERN, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Thousands of volunteers toiled alongside rescue workers Saturday to clear walls of debris left by downpours from Berne to Bucharest, which have caused more than $1 billion in damage in Switzerland alone.

Hundreds of people returned to their flood-damaged homes in Switzerland and other parts of central Europe and the Balkans, where the torrential rain has killed more than 40 people in the past week.

In the Swiss capital, Berne, police said most of the 1,100 residents of the old quarter, evacuated for fear the centuries-old buildings could collapse, were being allowed back, although water and electricity supplies had not been restored.

"The flood risk has receded, but there is an awful lot of clearing up to do," said Berne police spokesman Franz Maerki.

In southern Germany, hastily constructed dams on the Danube River prevented serious flood damage in the city of Regensburg, but parts of the old center of Passau were still under water.

Some 30,000 people were involved in cleaning up and working to prevent further flooding, with around 1.5 million sandbags still in place across the region.

Heavy rain overnight in the southern Austrian provinces of Styria and Carinthia caused more landslides and flooding, though there were no reports of casualties.

Roads to popular mountain resorts in the western province of Tyrol reopened, though many routes remained closed to trucks and other heavy vehicles. The Austrian government estimates the damage at hundreds of million of dollars.

Power and telephone connections were expected to be restored in all of the mountainous province by Saturday night, Austrian news agency APA reported.

In Switzerland, the main route through the Alps, the Gotthard tunnel, reopened to road traffic after being closed for five days. But some Alpine villages remained cut off.

Retirees in the village of Klosters, a ski village frequented by Britain's Prince Charles, were still holed up in a hotel after their care home was flooded, and hundreds of tourists in the mountain resort of Engelberg spent a sixth day cut off from the rest of Switzerland.

More rain was forecast for Switzerland, but without the intensity of earlier in the week. It would fall mainly south of the Alps in the Italian-speaking Ticino region which was spared the earlier deluge.

More than 30 people have died in Romania, while 10 have died in Switzerland and Austria and one drowned in Germany.