The swollen river reached its peak level at about 1 p.m. Wednesday and began to slowly drop. "It's a good sign, but there is still a long way to go. The water is still rushing quite fast, and it's still extremely dangerous," said Petr Manes, a rescue worker.

Prague Mayor Igor Nemec said the first challenge to the city will be maintaining public health. He urged evacuees not to return to their homes until power and sewage services were fully restored to areas affected by evacuation orders. "The danger is still there, it is not possible to return," Nemec said.

City leaders pegged preliminary damage estimates at "billions of crowns." Fixing the waterlogged subway system will cost at least half a billion crowns, said Prague Transport Company spokeswoman Michaela Kucharova. He said it will be several weeks before the system is completely operational.

Authorities predicted that floodwaters would recede quickly from Kampa island and the Smichov, Troja and Liben districts. In the Karlin neighborhood, where rescuers used boats to ferry stranded residents from their homes, the flood conditions were expected to persist for at least a week. Recovery in Stromovka also was projected to take longer.

The river continues to threaten the Charles Bridge and crews worked to prevent debris from damaging the 14th-century bridge's arches. The basement of the National Theatre was flooded.

The historic Old Town was evacuated early Wednesday morning, stranding many tourists. Metro service was suspended in the center, along with many tram lines through the center. The Florenc bus station, the city's main terminal, was closed.

Authorities had ordered the evacuation of about 50,000 residents from central Prague. They set up temporary shelters in schools and other public buildings.

Among the casualties in the Troja district was Kadir the elephant. The animal had to be shot at the inundated Prague zoo because officials could find no way to rescue it. "Kadir was at the end of his tether and was drowning, so we had no other possibility than to shorten his suffering," zoo director Petr Fejk said. Zookeepers were also forced to killed a hippopotamus. A gorilla drowned in its cage. The zoo was still searching for three sea lions that escaped.

Residents awoke Tuesday morning to sound of evacuation sirens and trucks with megaphones blaring warnings that people should evacuate and pack only items necessary for four or five days. Buildings were sandbagged, and stores boarded up. Emergency workers shut off access to most of the city's bridges.

At one point, all of the islands in the river's course through Prague were submerged.

Electricity was cut off in some areas of Prague. Power distributor Prazska energetika (PRE) declared a state of emergency in Prague, spokesman Petr Holubec said. Holubec said that PRE would restrict power supplies if needed to prevent threats to "life, health and property." Scattered power and gas outages were reported throughout the city.

Utility workers were standing by in case the waters threatened a major power cable that crosses the river in a tunnel, which would require that electricity be cut off to the city center.

Workers scrambled to save the city's historic legacy. Valuable volumes deposited in the National Library near the bridge were moved from the basement to upper floors. Artworks in galleries and exhibition rooms on the Vltava embankment also were moved.

Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla declared that a state of emergency existed in Prague, Plzen (Pilsen), Karlovy Vary, and central and south Bohemia through Aug. 22.

Spidla also pledged to make a major investment in anti-flood measures in the wake of floodwaters that have swept over central and south Bohemia, killing at least ten people and causing more than 1 billion Kc ($33 million) in damages.

The recent flooding has highlighted the country's poor state of preparations even after a warning was sounded by massive flooding in 1997.

The Agriculture Ministry estimated that anti-flood measures would cost 30 billion Kc over the next 10 years. The government said it was ready to provide 1.1 billion Kc for immediate relief efforts.

Spidla said the country's landscape isn't able to absorb as much water as in the past, so "we must think about reconstructing our landscape."

Spidla also promised to help bail out south Bohemia, the hardest-hit region, where damages were estimated at about 1 billion Kc. "Just as the government did not forsake Moravia [in 1997], it will not forsake south Bohemia," he said.

The government will look for money in the budget reserve, or the budget will have to be changed, Spidla said. Some of the costs also must be absorbed by insurers and individual communities and towns.

Thousands of people had to be evacuated in west and south Bohemia. Worst hit were the south Bohemia districts of Ceske Budejovice, Strakonice, Cesky Krumlov, Prachatice, Písek and Jindrichuv Hradec.

By Aug. 15, flooding had claimed 10 lives in the Czech Republic. The first victim was a 21-year-old woman who died in a summer cottage that was hit by an uprooted tree in Varvazov near Pisek, south Bohemia. Her body was found Aug. 8. The same day, a raft carrying a 19-year-old woman capsized on the Berounka river near Darova, west Bohemia, and the woman drowned. Also on Aug. 8, a 45-year-old man died after his car was swept into water by the Malse river in Kaplice, south Bohemia.

On Aug. 12, a 55-year-old man drowned after walking into the swollen Vltava river in Prague, despite his neighbors¹ warnings.

Two volunteer firefighters died of heart failure while conducting rescue operations in Tabor, south Bohemia, and Benesov, central Bohemia. Heart failure also killed a pensioner from Ceske Budejovice who had been struggling with water in a cellar.

Electricity was disrupted in some regions, as well as mobile telephone and fixed-line services.

The damage incurred by clients of the largest Czech insurers will amount to tens of millions of crowns in south Bohemia alone. Farmers in Ceske Budejovice and Cesky Krumlov suffered about 50 million Kc in damage, as water engulfed about half of the farmland there and destroyed 30 percent of crops.

Anti-flood measures in Prague have been prepared by experts since 1997. The first phase, involving the protection of a more than 2-kilometer (more than 1.2-mile) stretch of Old Town and Josefov, was begun in 2000.

The country has stepped up anti-flood measures since the 1997 floods. Those floods, which affected almost one-third of the country and were the country's worst flooding of the 20th century, killed 50 people and caused more than 63 billion Kc of damage. The floods left more than 10,000 people without homes in the town of Troubky, north Moravia.

The flooding across Europe has been blamed on the global phenomenon of El Nino, a warming of water temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean that alters storm tracks and causes freak weather patterns.

Nineteen members of a Czech emergency response team and five rescue vehicles were sent to Austria, which experienced its worst floods in more than a century.