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CNN Live At Daybreak

Dresden Braces for More Flooding

Aired August 15, 2002 - 06:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Time to get a little update on the weather in Europe. In Germany, residents today are bracing for the worst flooding in 150 years. A fresh flood wave is rolling toward the historic city of Dresden, prompting more residents to flee their homes and businesses.
That's where CNN's Gaven Morris joins us by phone.

Good morning -- Gaven.

GAVEN MORRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson.

Let me just paint you a little picture of the atmosphere in Dresden at the moment. It's very much a siege atmosphere. There are emergency vehicles doing their rounds constantly, sirens blaring all the time, military aircraft flying over the city.

What they're waiting for is that flood wave or the flood peak to come from Prague, where we saw those floods yesterday, through Dresden. Then, city officials say they're expecting a peak around 8.5 meters, maybe 9 meters. At the moment, the river level is at about 8 meters. So sometime later in the day, that peak will come through.

Now, they've never seen a flood like that, certainly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) maybe for 150 years. So city officials think they have done all that they can, but still, they can't be quite sure.

What they have done is evacuated a lot of the hospitals in town, taken all the intensive care patients out first, by helicopter, by ambulance. And now, they're evacuating up to 2,500 other patients from all the hospitals in this city. Their basements are filling up with water, and they can't guarantee the electricity will stay.

So that's the situation here at the moment -- Anderson.

COOPER: Gaven is it just the hospitals that have been evacuated? Or are ordinary citizens evacuating their homes?

MORRIS: There have been a number of suburbs here in Dresden, not so much the city center, but out in the suburbs, the more lower-lying areas, where the water has already inundated those areas. They've taken quite a few residents out of there already. They're gathering in schools and community halls.

So some thousands of people in that situation, and then as you mentioned, the hospitals as well -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Gaven Morris reporting from Dresden -- thanks very much.

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