Emergency services are shoring up flood defences in Central and Eastern Europe after thousands of homes were damaged.

We can show you now these pictures from the city of Ostrava in the northeast of the Czech Republic.

We know that the flood situation remains critical in many areas and that evacuations are ongoing.

We can speak to our Prague correspondent now, Rob Cameron.

Just talk us through the situation where you are now, Rob.

Well, I'm here in the capital in Prague and it looks and feels pretty bad but actually, the situation here in Prague is perhaps not as critical as elsewhere in the country.

Certainly in parts of northeast Moravia, in cities like Ostrava, towns like Opava, Kronov, Český Češín,

there they are evacuating thousands of people with one town high up in the mountains, Jeseník, has been completely cut off with the roads and the railway lines completely submerged by the flood waters.

So many thousands of people now being evacuated from their homes.

Most people are doing so willingly.

Unfortunately, some people have refused to leave their homes,

and so now we're seeing reports of army and police helicopters circulating those villages and towns along those rivers trying to save people who refuse to leave their homes and now find themselves stranded in them.

The meteorologists say that actually we have seen something like 80% of the precipitation that was due to fall over the country this weekend has now fallen.

So perhaps the worst is now behind us here in the Czech Republic, but of course, four people still missing from these floods.

They were swept into the river yesterday, the late last night, and the authorities don't know whether they have survived.

So a dramatic picture here in Prague but much worse across the country.

OK, thanks very much. Rob Cameron for us there in Prague and let's look at the situation in Poland now.

I can speak to our Warsaw correspondent Adam Easton.

How are things there, Adam?

Situations deteriorated quite rapidly here in Poland over the last few hours.

Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, has been speaking after a crisis management meeting in the southwest of the country just by the Czech border actually where he confirmed the first fatality. A person has drowned here in Poland

and he said 1,600 residents, just of the town where he was talking from, have been evacuated and he urged people to cooperate with the emergency services to evacuate their homes, leave their homes if they're called to do so.

He also said that they've lost mobile phone coverage, internet coverage, and they're having to rely on landlines for much of the communication in this area.

And also the military are being drafted in, military helicopters and transporters are being drafted in to help the people in these towns which are flooded.

We've seen lots of images on social media being posted, particularly of this town where he was talking from Krocko and another town, Głuchowazy, which the river level has there has broken over the makeshift sandbag embankment and is now flooded in the historic town centre.

The mayor of that town has made a dramatic appeal. He said, "We're drowning. Please, everybody evacuate to higher ground."

So the situation, as I say, has deteriorated quite markedly here in Poland,

but Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he didn't think,

even though there's been more rainfall in the last few days, 20 centimetres in some parts of southern Poland, than there were in 1997 in the dramatic floods there where more than 100 people died in Poland and the Czech Republic,

he said the infrastructure that's been put in place since those terrible floods should help the situation.

He's talking there about reservoirs, dry reservoirs which can be opened to take the floodwater in and also the anti-flood dams that have been built in the 20 or so years since those terrible events.