EMERGENCY crews and volunteers yesterday struggled to keep embankments and sand barriers from giving way amid record flooding along the Danube and its tributaries in northern Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans.

The rising Danube flooded hundreds of homes in Serbia and Bulgaria today and threatened production at one of the Balkan’s biggest power plants.

Rescue workers piled sandbags to hold back surging floodwaters today and evacuated hundreds of people from alpine valleys in Austria and southern Germany as heavy rains and landslides battered central and southern Europe.