A WEST Devon man who was in Prague when the city was hit by devastating floods last week has told the Times of his dramatic evacuation from a hotel in the centre of the deluged city.

Bramwell and Jill Hughes from Lamerton were in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, for a short break after attending a family wedding in Slovakia.

Mr Hughes and his wife arrived in Prague on Sunday, August 11, but barely had time to unpack before they had to evacuate their hotel the following morning.

'We went down to breakfast and suddenly we were told to pack up — we had to leave the hotel because of floods.'

He said staff at the hotel were in a state of panic: 'They did not know what to do, but the hotel was cleared by ten o'clock'.

Mr Hughes said the breakfast room in the hotel they were staying at was in the cellar, and would have flooded shortly after they evacuated the building.

He said guests left the Waldstein Hotel and took a long tram journey away from the danger area to Hotel Myra which was on the hillside away from the engulfing torrent.

Mr Hughes said across the city people were shocked by how quickly the floods had struck and were putting down sandbags around their properties, trying to keep out the rising tide.

'To watch the river flowing across the sidewalks and see whole buildings were collapsing and running down the river, and big barrels being pushed along by the current, it was an extraordinary sight,' he said.

Mr Hughes said that at the height of the flooding the Vitava River was twice its normal width.

The main bridges and routes into the city were closed, but some remained open and gave a vantage point to the chaos below for those who had been evacuated.

Last week's floods were the worst to hit Prague in more than a century, destroying many parts of the historic city.

Mr Hughes said he had been unable to visit many of the interesting parts of the city he had wanted to see, including Prague's Jewish quarter on the river bank and the old town because of the flooding.

He said he and his wife did briefly visit the old town square which had begun to be cleaned up by the end of the week.

However, with around 70,000 residents of the low-lying areas of Prague being forced to leave their homes last week, it will still be a long time before life in the city returns to normality.

Mr and Mrs Hughes arrived back in this country last weekend.