PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Police evacuated residents of Prague's Old Town as the rain-engorged Vltava River crested Wednesday, threatening the city center with unprecedented flooding. Across waterlogged Europe, the death toll rose to 94.
As the Vltava reached what was expected to be its flood peak at midafternoon, authorities said the next five hours would be a critical test for the thousands of sandbags piled to hold back the swirling brown flood waters.
"It is the beginning of the worst moment," said Vaclav Baca, a spokesman for the river authority. "All of the flood barriers are at their maximum level."
Heavy rains also have caused severe flooding in Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern India, where the death toll for the past two months rose to 876 when two people in Nepal were killed by landslides, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
China also has been hit by regular summer storms and flooding that have killed more than 800 people, including 13 who died after a Monday landslide in Yunnan, according to China Central Television. Sixteen people were missing.
Although the rain stopped in the Czech Republic and sunshine periodically broke through, the Vltava River still rose, producing Prague's worst flooding since 1890. Heavy wind gusts threatened to create a storm surge that could push flood waters through the barricades.
Officials in neighboring Slovakia declared a state of emergency Wednesday in the capital, Bratislava, where the Danube River was rising dangerously, the Czech news agency CTK reported. There were widespread power outages and some people used boats to get to work.
Five more deaths were reported Wednesday in Germany, pushing the toll there to seven. They included drowning deaths in the Dresden area and a victim who died of injuries suffered in a fall during a botched helicopter rescue attempt.
Raging waters cut off some towns in the German state of Saxony and left parts of Dresden flooded, including the famed Semper-Oper opera house and the Zwinger palace, home to a renowned collection of Renaissance paintings. Volunteers filled sandbags in the historic city center to try to keep the Elbe River from causing further damage.
Germany's agriculture minister said Wednesday there were "catastrophic harvest situations" in seven German states because the wet weather made harvesting impossible and left produce and grain saturated and susceptible to rot.
Hundreds of thousands of Czechs have fled the onslaught of the Vltava and dozens of other rivers, searching for higher ground as near-record rains soaked the continent for a week and a half. About 70,000 inhabitants of the capital's 1 million people left their homes, city officials said.
"We're fighting a phenomenon," Prague Mayor Igor Nemec said. "Whether the water will spill over the barriers or not remains to be seen."
Sirens wailed through deserted streets as the evacuation progressed, spurred on by water lapping up to within 1 1/2 feet of the edge of the barriers and reached the doors to the basement of the nearby National Theater. Helicopters surveyed the area overhead.
Prague municipal workers arrived at City Hall before dawn to save documents in offices in the river's path. Residents in the former Jewish quarter — the site of a centuries-old cemetery and several synagogues — also were ordered out.
"The situation is not optimistic, but I think we can still cope with it," Jaroslav Tvrdik, the Czech defense minister, told The Associated Press as he watched the evacuation.
Much of the capital remained without electricity or phone service, and at least three streets in the city's center were accessible only by boat. Officials shut off natural gas pipelines as a precaution.
Prague's Ruzyne International Airport was at risk of running out of fuel by Friday because flooding closed a nearby refinery.
In Austria, where at least seven people have died, firefighters and Red Cross volunteers using sandbags worked into the night to hold back parts of the swollen Danube, which flooded Vienna's port and some low-lying streets. On Wednesday, the river flooded a popular island in Vienna used for recreation and picnics, submerging small restaurants and stalls.
"We're sitting here in a bathtub without a plug," said Alfred Riedl, the mayor of Grafenwoerth in Lower Austria, where the Danube caused widespread flooding and evacuations.
The Danube began receding in some stricken villages and was rising at a slower rate in others, authorities said Wednesday. Austria's national weather service, meanwhile, said the torrential rains were over.
Most of Europe's flooding casualties were in Russia, where the death toll rose by one to 59 on Wednesday — mostly Russian tourists vacationing on the Black Sea who were swept away by swiftly moving water late last week.
The toll could rise higher there: Thirty cars and buses remain on the sea floor, and authorities have not been able to search them yet. New storm warnings were issued for the area.
After water engulfed Prague's historic Kampa island — flooding ornate palaces and villas dating to the Hapsburg Empire — volunteers redoubled their efforts to save the heart of the city from its normally sleepy river.
Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla deployed 4,000 soldiers throughout the country, and President Vaclav Havel cut short a Portugal vacation because of flooding that destroyed or rendered impassable more than a dozen bridges.
Among the wrecked spans was a 13th-century bridge in Pisek, some 60 miles south of Prague. The normally placid Otava River swamped the 360-foot structure, leaving only the heads of the statues decorating the bridge above the water line.
At the Zoological Garden on the outskirts of Prague, about 400 animals were moved to higher ground Tuesday. Zookeepers euthanized a 35-year-old Indian elephant called Kadir after he was stranded in flooded part of the zoo and officials decided he could not be saved from the flooding. A gorilla also was missing and presumed drowned Wednesday.