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Water levels are returning to normal in the northern areas of the Czech Republic where persistent rain put emergency crews on flood alert in the night hours. Likewise swollen rivers in Moravia and Silesia, are reported to have subsided. Although there was no serious flooding as a result of the adverse weather, two people may have lost their lives in the country’s swollen rivers. A raft with four crew members, who risked their lives on the river Lubina, overturned on Saturday and one person is still missing. The second incident was reported from south Bohemia where police on Sunday recovered the body of a woman from a river close to her home.

A state of flood alert has been called off in all parts of the country as water levels in Moravia and Silesia returned to normal overnight. Gale-force winds and heavy rain over the past 48 hours put emergency crews on stand-by with fire crews in the eastern parts of the country reporting over 100 emergency calls since Thursday. No serious damage or loss of life has been reported.

Weather forecasters have warned that flooding may occur in the eastern Moravia-Silesia, Olomouc and Zlín regions from Thursday evening as heavy rainfall causes rivers to rise. Small streams in the regions in question could reach the highest level of flood alert, say meteorologists. Water management officials have begun monitoring the situation. Heavy rains are also expected in Bohemia, though flooding is unlikely to occur in the western half of the country.

Prague is not willing to invest in parts of the city’s zoo which have been flooded repeatedly in recent years, the city’s mayor Tomáš Hudeček said on Wednesday. Mr. Hudeček is pushing for the zoo’s management to build planned new pavilions costing tens of millions of crowns in higher parts of the complex, which lies by the River Vltava in the Troja district. The mayor said even if the zoo was fitted with flood defences they could be breached in the event of an exceptional inundation.

Charity organizations say that Czechs are particularly generous in times of crisis – aid to tsunami, flood and earthquake victims has always been fast and generous, all the more so, when they have a special affinity to the town or region in need. When Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which has a large community of Czech expats, was ravaged by floods in 2008 Czechs promptly donated close to a million crowns in aid for the town.

The Czech Republic is set to receive around 412 million crowns from the European Union’s Solidarity Fund to deal with damage caused by June’s massive flooding, Commissioner for Regional Policy Johannes Hahn said on Thursday. The funding is yet to be approved by the European Parliament and EU member states. Along with Austria and Germany, the Czech Republic filed for aid in the wake of floods that hit Central Europe in June. In the Czech Republic, 15 people died in the flooding which inflicted damages of 16.4 billion crowns.

A flood protection system at Prague Zoo should be extended within the next three years, the city’s first deputy mayor Jiří Vávra said at an event marking the 82nd anniversary of the institution’s opening. According to an analysis that Mr. Vávra presented, it is possible to erect barriers around the zoo without causing greater flood damage to other spots in the Czech capital. The report was commissioned after flooding in June that badly affected lower parts of the zoo, which had been devastated during severe floods in 2002. This year’s damages are expected to exceed CZK 100 million.

Prague’s popular Jazz Dock club reopens two months after it was damaged by flooding. On Sunday, the club features a concert by New York-based Czech singer Marta Töpferová and the contrabass player Tomáš Liška who will play music from their latest album, Milokraj, the organizers said. The club was severely damaged in early June when the swollen Vltava flooded the premises where water levels reached 130 cm, destroying the floors, electrical wiring, acoustic walls, and other parts of the club. The costs of the reconstruction amounted to 4.5 million crowns

This week in Business News: Consumer prices dropped in June, along with inflation rate; Study shows that many key sectors still have very few women in management; Construction and industrial output down in June; New tougher regulations on alcohol distribution go through lower house; Businesses would mostly welcome early elections in hopes of a more stable political and economic situation.

The Prague City Hall announced that the current calculation of the damages caused by this year’s flooding in the capital is more than four billion crowns. Around 2.2 billion were damages to municipal property, while around two million crowns worth of damages were registered on private property. The city hall presented this calculation to the Finance Ministry on Wednesday, though deputy mayor Jiří Vávra said the number may rise. The largest damages were to waterways infrastructure, roadways, monuments and the Prague zoo.