Floods and Transport Disasters Have Claimed the Most Lives in Czechia Since 1851 — Academy of Sciences Study

Scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University have studied the deadliest weather-related disasters on Czech territory between 1851 and 2025, compiling a list of 13 tragedies with the highest death tolls. The research was published in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

According to meteorologist Miloslav Müller, one of the study's authors, six of the deadliest natural disasters were caused by floods, two by strong winds, and one by a lightning strike. The researchers also separately analyzed four transport disasters that were likewise triggered by weather conditions.

The central question the scientists sought to answer was whether the growing frequency and intensity of climate extremes leads to more casualties. The answer turned out to be reassuring — despite more frequent extreme weather events, modern science has become much better at predicting them, which has sharply reduced the scale of human losses. Since 2000, no single weather disaster in Czechia has claimed more than 20 lives. However, sudden flash floods remain a worrying exception — their rapid development can render early warnings largely ineffective.

The most tragic natural disaster on record was the flash flood in western Bohemia in May 1872, which killed 244 people. Extreme rainfall from repeated thunderstorms hit not only small rivers but also the Berounka, whose basin covers nearly 9,000 km². In Mladotice, 237 mm of rain fell in just an hour and a half — roughly the amount that would normally fall over four months. The disaster was made worse by the collapse of numerous ponds. Müller notes that a similar event would pose serious danger even today — a comparable flood struck the Rhineland region in July 2021.

Second on the list is the flooding of July 1897, which killed 88 people, with the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains) hit hardest. Daily rainfall exceeded 300 mm. In Dolní Maršov, a house collapsed under the force of the water, killing 17 people who had gathered for a wedding celebration, while another 8 were swept away by mudslides on the slope of Obří Důl.

Many still remember the devastating flood in Moravia and Silesia in July 1997, which claimed 61 lives. It was caused by a so-called Mediterranean cyclone that stalled over the country for four days of continuous heavy rain. The situation was most tragic in the village of Troubky on the Bečva River, where 9 people died on the night of July 8.

The list of tragedies also includes: the nighttime flash flood near Přeštice in May 1889 (57 deaths, with the village of Jíno hit hardest); the coal mine disaster at the Dukla mine in Šardice in June 1970, where 34 miners died in the flooded shaft, along with a three-year-old girl who drowned in a flooded cellar in Kyjov; and the Vltava flood of September 1890 (25 deaths), during which part of Prague's Charles Bridge collapsed, killing 20 army sappers.

Other forms of extreme weather also proved deadly: powerful windstorms in July 1929 across Bohemia and western Moravia killed 32 people (from wind, hail, and tornadoes), while hurricane-force winds in December 1868 claimed 27 lives across the country. The most unusual event was a sudden thunderstorm in May 1906, when lightning killed 20 people — 13 of them in a cemetery in Konajov (now part of Český Těšín), where they had taken shelter in a bell tower that was struck by lightning.

Weather also caused four of the country's largest transport disasters. The deadliest railway accident in Czech history occurred in November 1960 near Stéblová, close to Pardubice — dense fog led to a train collision that killed 118 people. A train departed the station without authorization after a conductor misread a light signal in the fog, and the drivers of the two oncoming trains spotted each other only 80 meters apart — too late to stop.

The worst air disaster in Czech history took place in October 1975 in Prague's Suchdol district, killing 80 people. A Yugoslav McDonnell Douglas DC-9 was carrying Czech tourists from Tivat, Montenegro, to Prague-Ruzyně Airport. During landing, in thick ground fog caused by a radiation inversion, the pilots descended too early, and the plane crashed into a cottage settlement above the Vltava River.

Another deadly railway accident occurred in November 1868 near Čerhovice, killing 31 people. Heavy overnight snowfall (a record 52.6 mm of precipitation in a single day, measured at Prague's Klementinum) caused a passenger train carrying Hungarian soldiers to get stuck in snowdrifts near Újezd, where it was struck from behind by a following freight train.

The fourth transport tragedy was a plane crash in the Krkonoše Mountains in February 1945 — in the so-called Sluneční jáma (Sun Pit), an overloaded German military Junkers Ju 52 aircraft, flying from besieged Wrocław to Dresden with wounded soldiers aboard, crashed into a mountainside due to a navigational error and fog, killing 24 people.

The study involved researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as Masaryk University in Brno and Charles University.

Read also: Prague transport: a complete guide for newcomers — metro, trams, tickets, and the PID Lítačka app

Source: ekolist.cz