A 54-year-old man dies in Durrës as the Vjosa floods Novosela and the Zeta hits Danilovgrad

A 54-year-old man was found dead in an irrigation canal in Durrës on Thursday after floodwater swept him away, the first confirmed death in a Balkan flood that has pushed the Vjosa out of its banks in southern Albania and the Zeta into houses in Montenegro. Emergency services in Albania were clearing water from about 800 buildings. About 300 people had been given temporary shelter.

In the Vlorë region the Vjosa broke out near Novosela. Rescue teams used inflatable boats to reach people cut off by the water, including two elderly residents whose house was flooded to about 1.5 metres. Evacuation orders covered the low ground by the river. Parts of Albania recorded more than 100 millimetres of rain in 24 hours. Authorities warned that further snow and ice could block roads that the flood had already damaged.

Across the border, the Zeta flooded residential streets in Danilovgrad, hitting about 30 homes and several nearby villages. Near Podgorica, soldiers and engineers put up a temporary pontoon bridge to replace a crossing a torrent had destroyed. Excavators cleared drainage channels so crews could reopen transport links. The Montenegrin damage is smaller in the published count than Albania's, and it includes a broken bridge on the approaches to the capital.

The weather behind the rivers was a run of severe winter conditions across the Balkans, not a single cloudburst. Snow on higher ground and rain on the coast arrived together. A river like the Vjosa, which drains a large mountain catchment into a flat coastal plain, rises fast when that combination hits. Novosela sits on that plain. The 1.5 metre mark inside one house is a local measurement. The 800 buildings being pumped are the regional one.

Durrës, where the man died, is on the Adriatic, north of the Vjosa mouth. The canal death and the southern river flood are the same weather system acting on different drains. An irrigation canal in a coastal city and a braided river in the south do not need the same volume of water to kill. The body was found after he was swept away. No other deaths had been confirmed in the accounts published on Thursday night and Friday morning.

The shelter figure, 300 people, is the number who had been moved into temporary housing while crews worked on the 800 buildings. It will move as houses are pumped out or as more families leave upper floors. The pontoon at Podgorica is a more fixed fact. A destroyed crossing does not reopen because the rain pauses. Until a permanent span is back, traffic into that part of the capital uses a military bridge.

Forecasters told both governments that snow and ice could follow the rain. That is the next constraint on the pumps and the boats. A second cold pulse on flooded roads is how a one-day river flood becomes a week of closed villages. Thursday's verified toll is one death in Durrës, 800 buildings being cleared, 300 people sheltered, a house at Novosela flooded to 1.5 metres, and about 30 homes under the Zeta in Danilovgrad.