As forecast by meteorologists, a severe storm swept across Upper Austria on Wednesday evening and into Thursday night. Heavy rain, hail and gusts of wind caused enormous damage.
The impact on the population was considerable. Hundreds of people were without electricity. According to Netz Oberösterreich, numerous communities in the Innviertel and Mühlviertel were affected. Large-scale outages occurred in the Districts Rohrbach and Urfahr area. Numerous households in Altenfelden, Kleinzell, St. Stefan-Afiesl, Haslach, Vorderweißenbach and Bad Leonfelden had no electricity at times.
The fire brigades were once once more in constant use. According to the state fire brigade command, the first alarms came in around 6 p.m. It was only in the second half of the night into Thursday that things calmed down. “Trees on the streets, flooded buildings and flooded roadways were the main reasons for the operations.”
Photo gallery: Storms swept across Upper Austria
(Photo: FF Ried im Innkreis) Bild 1/82
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A total of 324 operations were counted. 3300 personnel were on the move to help. The districts were particularly badly affected by the storm cells Braunau am Inn, Ried im Innkreis and Rohrbach.
In Aurolzmünster A tree fell on the railway line and the train service was temporarily cancelled. In Ried im Innkreis The fire brigade was called out following the roof of a boarding school was blown off by a gust of wind.
Local Hail Gewitter
In Micheldorf (Kirchdorf district) hailstones up to three centimetres in size were reported. In Aspach (Braunau district) more than 30 litres of water per square metre rained down on the earth within an hour. Numerous floods occurred. Storm peaks of 109 km/h were recorded in Waizenkirchen (Grieskirchen district) measured.
Roadblocks in Landeck
Tyrol, parts of Lower Austria and Styria were also affected by the storm. In the Landeck district, the heavy rain caused mudslides on the B 197 (Arlbergstrasse) in the area of the Marienwasengallerie and on the L11 (Piller Landesstrasse) in the area of the Schlachthofkurve, as the Tyrolean police announced in the morning.
The emergency services had to close the B197 completely to traffic from 10:30 p.m. to 12:46 a.m. and one side until 2:00 a.m. The L11 had to be closed on both sides for around 1.5 hours at around 11:00 p.m. as part of the clean-up work.
The extent of the damage cannot yet be quantified. No one was injured.
Author
Franziska Giles
Editor
Franziska Giles
