Monday The news that the flood was coming broke at the same terrible speed as that at which the waters were to rise The Vltava river was higher than I had ever seen it. The Vltava river was higher than I had ever seen it.
In the beautiful square on Kampa Island, beneath the Charles Bridge, I found hundreds working into the night under emergency floodlights, filling sandbags and buildings walls of them to keep the water out. They were mostly volunteers, locals who had come by to see what was going on and joined in.The bad news kept coming The mayor ordered the evacuation of 50,000 people. One man shrugged to me as he filled sandbags: “I don’t think this will be enough, but …”Some of the others began to sing old Czech songs as they worked. Feeling guilty, I carried some sandbags.Tuesday I awoke to the sound of sirens wailing for people to evacuate. Down by the river, Kampa island was already a metre deep in water.

The barricades had broken, but the volunteers and emergency services were still hard at work in the Old Town Square.Late in the afternoon the river began swelling so fast we could see it rise minute by minute. We watched amazed as the walls of a wooden house floated through the city centre on the river.In the metro stations there were announcements to keep calm, but they didn’t seem necessary. In a pub in the Old Town I had a beer with locals who were refusing to evacuate. The authorities cut the electricity supply to the Old Town, but the restaurants in the Old Town Square brought in generators and opened for business as usual.Wednesday The BBC reports implied the whole of central Prague was submerged. I was getting calls from England asking if I was waist-deep in water. In fact, the cameras were concentrating on the suburb of Karlin, where the waters had broken in and flooded the streets, while in the Old Town the defences were holding – just.I worried that this over-dramatisation of the story would cost Prague tourism dearly.

Would people think it’s all been swept away?The historic centre was still here The water stopped just in time A few inches more and it would have flooded the Old Town The Charles Bridge was a wonder. Six and a half centuries old, it was still standing with an incredible weight of water bearing down on it.Thursday The water was going down at last. The full story came out of the flooded zoo: a hundred animals had died; an elephant, trapped as the waters rose around him, had to be put down before he drowned; three seals, literally in their element, escaped.Terrible news was coming in from the rest of the country. The country’s oldest bridge, in Pisek, had lost a statue in the floods.