As the water receded in Stronie Slaskie, one of the areas worst hit by massive floods in southwest Poland, residents and volunteers began clearing up and assessing the damage. - REUTER
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00:00After massive flooding swept through the town of Stroni ÅšlÄ…skiej, Poland, leaving behind
00:06mountains of debris, residents are now faced with a daunting cleanup effort.
00:12Sixty-seven-year-old Mirosław Wegersen said he's been running this ice cream shop for
00:1630 years, but is not insured.
00:20He points to a spot high up on the wall where he says the water reached.
00:26He says there used to be refrigerators in this room and that, quote, everything was
00:29flying in the air.
00:33Parts of the town of 5,000 people were swamped when a dam burst last weekend during Central
00:38Europe's worst floods in more than two decades.
00:42The town, located in southwest Poland, was one of the hardest hit areas.
00:47The historic flooding swept away homes and cars, causing billions of dollars in damages
00:52and killing at least 24 people.
00:54Wegersen says one of his neighbors is among the dead.
00:58The first building on the street, the one that is completely destroyed, there was a
01:02couple.
01:03The wife survived.
01:04Unfortunately, the husband was taken away by the water.
01:07They found his body downstream.
01:09And in the morning, the wife swam away to a garage there on some log board.
01:16Wegersen and others said they will work to make their homes livable again before the
01:20onset of winter, which one resident said he hoped would come as late as possible.