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UK issues severe flood warnings, storm injures 9 in Germany

Published:Monday | February 17, 2020 | 9:36 AM
Vehicles submerged in floodwater from the River Teme near Lindridge, England, Monday, February 17, 2020. (Jacob King/PA via AP)

LONDON (AP) — Britain issued five severe flood alerts on Monday, warning of a danger to life after Storm Dennis dumped weeks worth of rain in some places.

It gale-force winds also injured nine people in weather-related car accidents in Germany and caused flooding and power outages elsewhere in northern Europe.

The severe flood warnings were for the central English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire.

The Met Office, Britain’s meteorological agency, issued another 221 flood warnings for England, along with 24 for Wales and 12 for Scotland.

The weather system brought winds of more than 90 miles per hour and up to six inches of rain over the weekend.

Forecasters said river levels in parts of northern England had yet to reach their peak.

In the northern England city of York, authorities were piling up more than 4,000 sandbags as the Rover Ouse continued to rise.

It’s expected to peak on Tuesday.

Other residents in parts of Wales and western England were cleaning up Monday after the storm flooded roads, railways, homes and businesses and disrupted travel across Britain.

The British environment secretary said climate change was making extreme weather events more common, but denied that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was unprepared.

“We’ll never be able to protect every single household just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme, but we’ve done everything that we can do with a significant sum of money, and there’s more to come,” Minister George Eustice said.

In Germany, at least nine people were injured in weather-related car accidents.

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