Troubled waters: The multiple impact of the devastating floods in Europe

“The flood has changed our lives. My children are scared every time it rains. My son had a panic attack when the bridges in Faenza were closed recently, because he thought the same thing would happen. And I can’t help but look at the river every time I drive by. I live from day to day now. Everything can change in an instant. You know, I lost everything in half an hour”. Francesca Placci, 42, a cook, lives in the Italian city of Faenza, in the province of Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna. Faenza, located 50 kilometres south-east of Bologna, was flooded three times in 18 months during the 2023-2024 biennium. As in Thessaly and Valencia, the inhabitants of this Italian city are still living with fear and anxiety about the future after this triple shock.  “Every time it rains, I am afraid. Our confidence is gone. We no longer know what we can rely on. This place is not safe. Nothing will ever be the same again. My husband is more tired now, more silent. In our community we continue to help each other, but the state has never been there for us. Instead, all we got was a mess of bureaucracy and crumbs of financial support. We have learned to rely only on ourselves and the people around us,” says Simona Bacchilega, 54. 

Her voice echoes and joins those of the inhabitants of Palamas Karditsa, Mandra, Volos and Pelion, the neighbourhoods of Valencia in Spain, the Danube regions of Hungary and Slovakia, in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saarland in Germany, in the provinces of Karlovac and Sisk-Moslavina in Croatia and in dozens of other affected areas.

The deadliest natural disaster

Floods are the most common natural disaster. They account for 44% of all natural disasters worldwide and cause almost half of all deaths. Today, 1.81 billion people (23% of the world’s population) are considered to be directly exposed to the risk of severe flooding. Their frequency has more than doubled since 2004, scientists say, due to the acceleration of the hydrological cycle caused by anthropogenic climate change. 

Over the past 30 years, floods in Europe have affected 5.5 million people, caused more than 3,000 deaths and resulted in economic losses of more than €170 billion. But these are just journalistic estimates.

How many people have actually died in floods in each region of Europe over the last decade? How many and which specific areas in each country and region have been affected, and which infrastructure has been hit hardest, especially in the last two years? And how can we protect ourselves effectively? The publicly available scientific data on floods in Europe is fragmentary, incomplete and uninformative.

MIIR’s month-long cross-border journalistic data research – unique in Europe – as part of EDJNET, has managed to combine data from three different open databases to create the first comprehensive pan-European database on floods, recording the number of floods, flood victims and flood deaths in all European regions from 2014 to 2024. 

In addition, we have created a separate database based on satellite data for the last two years (2023-2024), which accurately records the extent of flooding and its impact on land and infrastructure in all European regions of 17 Member States.

The devastating impact in numbers

Between 2014 and 2024, data collected by Copernicus, the EM-DAT public database and the Hanze database show that at least 681,076 people were affected by floods in 24 European countries. However, the actual number of people affected is higher as data is not available for all floods

Based on the existing data we have analysed, at least 1,579 people have died directly as a result of floods in Europe over the last decade.

Greece is one of the most affected countries, we have too many incidents with fatalities. We are the fourth country in the Eastern Mediterranean in terms of deaths caused by floods. Every year in Greece we have a 2.5% chance of having more than 80 deaths in a flood event,” says Katerina Papagiannaki, an operational scientist at the Institute for Research, Environment and Sustainable Development of the National Observatory of Athens. Together with Michalis Diakakis, a hydrogeologist and assistant professor at the University of Athens, they study flood fatalities in Europe, having contributed to the most reliable (because it includes all events with at least one fatality) large-scale database on flood fatalities in the Euro-Mediterranean region (Flood Fatalities from the Euro-Mediterranean region FFEM-DB). The number of deaths in 14 Euro-Mediterranean countries over the last 35 years exceeds 3000.

Excess mortality
The official death toll in Thessaly in 2023 was 17. However, a recent study by the Centre for Research and Training in Public Health, Health Policy and Primary Health Care, published by the Greek daily Efsyn. (“Plains mourns 335 dead, not 17 from Daniel”, 16.3.2025), shows that the actual total number of deaths was 20 times higher in the first quarter after the floods. In total, 335 people died within three months, mostly from cardiovascular and/or respiratory problems. 

As noted by meteo.gr (K. Papagiannaki, K. Lagovardos, G. Kyros, 18/10/2024), in the last 45 years Greece has experienced 70 deadly floods due to heavy rainfall, resulting in 190 deaths. There is an alarming trend: the number of deaths caused by floods is increasing over time. In the last decade, for example, half of all recorded deaths have occurred in the last 45 years. 

According to the Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development of the National Observatory of Athens, in the Balkans as a whole, floods with more than 10 fatalities occur every 6.5 years, while floods with more than 22 fatalities occur every 12 years.Our research shows that in the last two years, 17 European countries have experienced 32 floods, affecting a total of 427.336,2 hectares – an area 1.5 times the size of Luxembourg – according to satellite data from Copernicus Emergency Management Mapping. 

The area flooded in Europe over the past two years is almost twice the size of Greater London and larger than Rome, Paris and Berlin combined.

Farmers in despair 

Analysis of the 61 affected areas shows that provincial areas suffered the most extensive flooding, with some 138.663 hectares flooded. Similarly, 98.447 hectares were affected in intermediate (semi-urban) areas and 88.468 hectares in urban areas.

Almost 82.5% of the total area affected is agricultural land and natural ecosystems. The floods affected 3,276,660 hectares of agricultural land, including arable land, pastures, permanent crops and heterogeneous agricultural land. This highlights the serious impact of floods on farmers’ livelihoods.

The largest flood in Europe in the last two years started on 5 September 2023 in the Thessaly region of Greece, affecting almost 1,223,750 hectares, of which 92% was agricultural land. The storm directly claimed the lives of 17 people, affected 44,000 inhabitants in Karditsa, Trikala, Magnesia and Larissa and resulted in the death of more than 200,000 animals.

The actual extent of the flood in Thessaly

Until now, the area flooded in Thessaly seemed to be less than 1 million hectares (72.000 hectares was the first official report from the Athens Observatory), but our analysis shows that the actual extent of the disaster is much greater than what has been reported in the press (up to 80.000 hectares).

It turns out that the total area affected in the whole of Thessaly was 122.374,7 hectares, which is more than 50% more than the initial estimates). This is because our measurement includes the ‘flood footprint’ recorded by the Copernicus satellites – areas where water was present but had receded by the time the satellite image was taken. As Copernicus told MIIR, “we assume with a very high probability that a flood has occurred where traces of it are detected in the satellite images”.

Damaged infrastructure – Negative Greek first place 

Our data shows that Thessaly also experienced the most significant damage to the transport network in the whole of Europe over the last two years, with 1,590 km of roads and almost 149 km of rail infrastructure damaged. 

Our research shows that in the last two years alone, floods have damaged a total of 4,256.2 km of transport infrastructure in Europe (road, rail, maritime, urban transport and aviation). Local roads account for almost 67% of the total damage, with urban areas suffering the greatest impact on road infrastructure. A further 6,885.4 km of unpaved roads, mainly in rural areas, were also affected.

In the last two years, floods have also affected 1,223.6 km of pipelines and communication infrastructure, mainly in areas of intense urban development. This includes 845.9 km of long-distance pipelines, communication and power lines, and 377.7 km of local pipelines and cables, leaving thousands of homes without electricity and drinking water. The figures show that while rural areas have been hit hardest by the floods, urban areas have suffered more damage to their infrastructure.

Germany has been the worst performer in Europe in this category over the last two years, with 209.8 km of long-distance power lines and cables and 117.7 km of local power lines and cables affected.
In Valencia, tens of thousands of homes were left without electricity and drinking water for several days, while in Poland, Environment Minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska said that 80,000 households were without power at the peak of the flooding caused by Storm Boris.

Another important finding is that 196.404,5 hectares in 46 non-coastal areas of Europe were affected by floods in the last two years, compared to 129.173,1 hectares in only 15 coastal areas.

These data show that inland floods at municipal and provincial level, often caused by heavy rainfall, overflowing rivers or poor drainage, have affected a larger area than coastal floods. However, areas close to the water appear to be more vulnerable to flooding, with the majority of floods in a decade occurring in coastal areas, particularly in Spain, France and Italy.

Class Heatwaves Class Floods

As we know, the temperature in every city rises and falls depending on the building, the green areas and trees, the quality of housing. Usually in areas where the working class, the poorer classes and immigrants live, building is denser, green spaces are scarcer, the temperature rises and heat waves are more unbearable. 

As was shown for the floods in a parallel investigation by the Spanish El Confidencial, the areas most affected in Valencia have lower levels of income per capita and, at the same time, the houses built there, where land is cheaper, are less prepared to cope with this type of event. The five Spanish provinces with the highest number of buildings in flood-prone areas at risk of flooding are, in order, Murcia, Seville, Valencia, Alicante and Tarragona. 

“When it rains, I’m still afraid that the river will take everything away” 

The last three and a half decades have been among the most flood-rich periods in Europe in the last 500 years. Scientists have shown (Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years, Nature, 2000) that this period differs from other similar flood-rich periods in terms of magnitude, air and sea temperatures and seasonality. The summer of 2024 was the warmest ever recorded in Europe and worldwide. Note that for each additional degree Celsius of global average temperature, the intensity of precipitation increases by about 7%.

The biggest problem is that sea temperatures in the Mediterranean have risen. The critical limit is a water temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. “When this is exceeded, the meteorological system that passes over an area is enriched with enormous additional moisture, and all this acts as both an accelerator and a magnifier of the phenomenon,” explains Professor Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor at the University of Thessaly. 

Such a condition leads to the famous Omega cyclones, as happened with Daniel in Thessaly. “In the same region, two phenomena that are supposed to occur every 500 and 1000 years have occurred in just three years. This automatically means that all the alarm bells have to go off, because the return periods change, all the statistical distributions change and, of course, the whole way of coping and planning changes”.

 Attica sends out SOS

The bad weather in Valencia had more than double the rainfall of Daniel, but lasted only a few hours. Yet it happened while too many people were on the road, returning from work. Daniel, which broke all rain records in Greece, lasted 3-4 days. Scientists explain that the so-called floods of the 50 years – like the once rare mega-fires – are now happening much more frequently. Since 2017, there has been a scientific study by the Ministry of Environment for Attica, which has been formulating flood risk maps with pre-Daniel data. The map is nightmarish, given that Attica has buried its rivers. In a post after Daniel, urban planning professor Nikos Belavilas warned: 

“If bad things happen, everything from the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Centre to Renti and the metro station at the port of Piraeus will be under water. Half of Kallithea, all of Moschato, all of Neo Faliro, Kaminia, Old Kokkinia and part of Tavros. With them hundreds of thousands of residents.This is not a science fiction scenario. The map of Volos, like the map of Piraeus, showed that half of the city is ‘in the red’. But Volos drowned without management scenarios, without a plan to rescue the population. Since September 2022, the Commission has been sending a warning letter making it clear that Greece has not complied with its flooding obligations.”

Flood protection does not mean (only) 112 

 “Governments insist on dealing only with the day after the disaster (post disaster), instead of taking preventive measures (risk-cost benefit). Between 2017-2021, Greece was given about €100 million in flood compensation alone. Only for Janus (a Mediterranean cyclone that hit the Mediterranean and mainly Greece in September 2020), 38 million euros were given, 7 million euros in state compensation and 31 million euros in insurance compensation,” notes Katerina Papagiannaki, a scientist at the National Observatory of Athens. 

The same is said by Nikitas Mylopoulos, professor at the University of Thessaly, director of the Laboratory of Hydrology and Analysis of Water Systems, making it clear that the only way to deal with the situation is to draw up a Holistic Flood Protection Plan with a series of projects that will “cooperate” with each other. 

Smart dams

“Flood management is very important,” says Mylopoulos. “It relates to how we with our projects will direct, guide the flood volumes as safely as possible to avoid major disasters. This is done first of all with the mountain hydrology projects: small earthen dams high up in the mountains, where the phenomenon starts, in the small streams. So that’s where you put the first stop. Second needed, smaller small and medium-sized dams and dikes downstream. And not the pharaonic big dams. Small dams, but set up smartly, in the areas that actually do the job. Thirdly, reforestation is needed throughout the region, and enhancing natural protection, vegetation cover is crucial in flood mitigation. And, of course, we must finally provide for flood zones, according to their risk, which are usually currently either built-up areas or fields of intensive farming. These zones must be returned with lighter land uses. The rivers must be given back their old meanderings, which play a role in reducing the risk. 

“Nature does not take revenge,” he continues. “Nature does its job. But in general, whenever we mess with it, we never know where it’s going to come from. A system like Daniel’s could strike in Attica unfortunately. Our big failure is that we don’t have early warning systems. But it’s not enough to just give the signal early to get people out and protected. You have to know where the ‘evil’ is going to strike, have some time ahead of you so that you can protect with coordinated doorway openings – not the chaos that happened on those Daniel nights – in addition to people, animals or property, and critical public infrastructure.”

Ιtaly – “Every time it rained, I had an anxiety attack”
We travel to the Italian town of Faenza in the province of Ravenna, 50 km southeast of Bologna. Between 16 and 18 May 2023, 350 million cubic metres of water, equivalent to six months of rain, fell in 36 hours in Emilia-Romagna, one of Italy’s most important agricultural regions. The heavy rainfall caused 23 rivers to overflow across the region, affecting 100 municipalities and causing more than 400 landslides, which in turn caused damage and closed hundreds of roads. All the water barriers between Rimini and Bologna broke or overflowed, flooding vast areas. A tragic toll of 17 dead and over 8.5 billion in estimated costs.

Simona Bacchilega, a worker in the municipality of Faenza, on the evening of 16 May 2023 was receiving messages from friends to leave her home. 

“We lived in the centre of the city, ten metres above the surface of the river, and we weren’t worried. We didn’t think the sewers could overflow. Until the moment we heard a strange sound coming from the bathroom and there was a terrible stench. Suddenly we saw water coming from the yard, despite the sandbags my husband and neighbor had placed. The water was coming in non-stop. I quickly grabbed a backpack, put in clothes, a flashlight, water. We went out into the street. I realized that my water was reaching my waist.We spent the entire first night awake, sitting in the dark. The power had been out since 9 o’clock at night. Looking outside, I could see the water rising in my car. “Not the car,” I thought. “I just unloaded it!”

“I was thinking of my aunt who used to tell us, ‘The river will take it all away’,” Simona recalls. “The elderly neighbor across the street was talking to us from his window. His wife was on dialysis, and all night long we exchanged glances. He was a professor, a great man. He lost his entire library. I used to watch him look at his books in the water. The next day helicopters were flying all the time, and we didn’t know what was happening.” 

For a while they stayed with some neighbors. “When we were able to return home, we realized we had to fend for ourselves. No one helped us. If you wanted water, you had to find it yourself. Volunteers and organized help never reached our area. Then we started to clean up.” 18 months later, in September 2024, Faenza, like dozens of areas in central Europe, was flooded again by the Boris storm. 

56-year-old bank employee Andrea Bazzeghi recounts: ‘The water came from another neighbourhood that was running with tremendous force. It first flooded the basement, came up the stairs as if it were a tenant and then slowly passed through the entrance of my apartment until it reached a height of 1.60 metres. We were stranded on the third floor, without water or electricity. We stayed at our friends’ house for three nights. With all the difficulties there were, as their son was in a wheelchair and needed mechanical breathing support. With no electricity, we had to do it manually, but luckily we found a solution with a generator. We slept on the floor and watched “Apocalypse” through the window at night. Helicopters were rescuing people who weren’t as lucky as we were.” That same night, 42-year-old cook Francesca Placci lost what she had painstakingly built over a lifetime. “My apartment was completely submerged, the water reached up to 3 cm from the ceiling,” she says.

Raffaela Paladini, an expert in trauma management after a disaster, visited Faenza as an “emergency psychologist” providing assistance to dozens of people. “Such a situation certainly has a traumatic impact. People who go about their daily lives as we all do, at some point in time find themselves in an emergency situation faced with something that disrupts their daily routine. This interruption initially causes confusion, a sense of disorientation, emptiness and despair. It can then trigger very different emotions, such as anger, rage and guilt.”

The home of 58-year-old teacher Novella Laghi suffered huge damage after the second flood. “We are financially exhausted. Everything needed to be replaced. The frustration was growing as there was no government support. I spent months looking for help, knocking on doors of public services, but in vain. But the worst part was the psychological impact. Every time it rained, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn’t sleep, waking up in the middle of the night to check if the river had swollen again. My mother, who was always strong, began to show signs of dementia. She was no longer the same.”

And for 66-year-old retiree Mirella Emiliani, everything has changed. “I used to pay attention to appearance, I had nice clothes, an organized home. Now, I have nothing. I don’t even have my old photos. The flood has changed my relationships with people. My few real friends did everything they could to help me. Others just disappeared. When it rains, I’m still scared. I think I can’t go through the same thing again. No one warned us in time. Nothing was done right. Now, I live day by day, because I learned that life can change in an instant.” 

However, all the affected people say almost the same thing: “this disaster has changed me, but it has also highlighted the power of solidarity”. Andrea Bazzocchi returned home after 1.5 years of suffering. “We are trying to rebuild our lives, step by step; this experience has taught us a lot, but we cannot live in fear. We move forward with optimism.”

Research identity

The cross-border data research was organised and coordinated by the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting (MIIR.gr) in the framework of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

The data collection, analysis and visualization was carried out by Konstantina Maltepioti. The data analysis was checked by the Deutsche Welle team. The illustrations were created by Louisa Karageorgiou.

A total of 6 EDJNet members participated in the survey, which was conducted from November 2024 to March 2025: MIIR (Greece), Atlatszo (Hungary), Facta (Italy), El Confidencial, Civio (Spain), PressOne (Romania).

The survey was published on 29 March 2025 in www.miir.gr and www.efsyn.gr. 

See the scrollytelling of the survey here.

Read the methodology of the survey here.

Original source: https://miir.gr/otan-vrechei-akoma-fovamai-oti-to-potami-tha-mas-ta-parei-ola/