Please help my sister after a major flood catastrophe.

Hello everybody.

My Name is Tanja and I was born in Vienna, Austria almost 39 years ago.

I moved to Denmark in 2015 and now live here and I have 2 amazing kids.

My lovely older sister Sabine has come to visit me last Friday and was very excited to be here to celebrate my daughters 7th birthday.

While my sister was here, eastern Austria had suffered extreme rain and storms which caused many rivers to overflow which in turn caused heavy flooding in smaller towns out in the country.

Near my sisters town a river dam broke which resulted in extreme flooding in her town.

Since my sister was here at the time, she and her dog were luckily safe, however she had a flock of chickens and small chicks in her garden which had suffered a lot.

We had dear friends nearby that were trying to raise important things in her house up to hopefully not get hit, check on the chickens which were safe. However, as soon as the nearby dam broke, everything got much worse.

The town had been evacuated and nobody could go to her house and get her chickens out, but as soon as the fire brigade gave the green light to go back on, our friends were able to pick up the chickens that survived. Unfortunately 1 chicken and 5 little chicks died.

The lower part of her house was completely flooded, the water was at hip-height and a lot of her furniture and possessions had been damaged, along with a big amount of wood pellets that were crucial for heating this winter as well as all the stored feed for her animals.

Unfortunately the state of her pellet heating system is not clear yet. She had just last year gotten this new heating system after her old heating system broke just as the winter was about to start, it had been very expensive and she had to turn around every cent to be able to get the heater in time to actually heat during the cold time around the corner.

Around more than half of her pellets had been damaged by the flooding as well as her freezer, washing machine, dryer, bicycles, workout gear, furnitures, clothes, shoes, jackets, heating system, tools, a sauna, her chicken coop and garden, you name it.

After contacting the insurance, they unfortunately do not cover enough to recover from all that loss and there will be need for many repairs, checking up on the walls, foundation etc.

There needs to be drying machinery rented (which will probably be in very high demand right now), a lot of cleaning up, renting a container for disposing all the damaged furniture etc.

My poor sister has been stressed and emotional the last days as she simply can't do anything from here but we are lucky that we have so lovely friends that tried to do what they can to minimize damage and save the animals, but the dam breaking- nobody could have expected and prepared for that.

My sister had helped me so much in the past with my own struggles and so I thought that the least I can do is to try and help her through this.

It will be a very very hard time, not only financially but also mentally and physically, so every little helps and will be so appreciated.

All the funds will be used for repairs and replacing of the crucial material losses.

Once the electricity is back and the kitchen functional, we will bake some delicious cake to bring down to the volunteer fire brigade to thank them for their hard work! :)

I have attached some pictures of the area.

The town and some surrounding towns had been declared to catastrophe areas due to the extreme floodings.

Also Austrias main city Vienna was hit badly with rivers flowing over, several public transport lines such as metros had to be shut down and some evacuations in some places in the city.