Dresden on new flood alert

German authorities today issued a flood alert for Dresden, where melting snow was swelling the Elbe River three years after its waters devastated the city’s cultural treasures.

Waters were expected to reach a flood plain below the old town’s stone ramparts by sometime today and the city fire department was put on round-the-clock alert, Saxony state officials said.

Residents were warned that roads and basements in parts of the city would flood tomorrow.

River levels were expected to reach 6.90 meters (22.5ft) on Monday – just short of levels that lapped downtown areas in the past.

A record 9.4 meters (nearly 31 feet) level, reached in the summer of 2002, caused damage costing billions of pounds in eastern Germany. Dresden’s museums, opera house and other cultural landmarks were flooded.

This weekend, melting snow in mountains across the border in the Czech Republic was driving up the Elbe, and smaller rivers and streams elsewhere in south-eastern Germany already had already overflowed today, the German Meteorological Service said.