"The dykes gave way at 3:00 am (0100 GMT) this morning and the evacuation kicked off shortly afterwards," Wieslaw Kulig, a volunteer fire-fighter in the community of 25,000, told AFP.

Like other locations across a swathe of southern Poland, Sandomierz -- a picturesque Renaissance-era town on the River Vistula -- has been transformed after torrential rain sparked the worst flooding in over a decade.

Residents of the riverside district were perched on the roofs of their homes, waiting for the rescue boats or police helicopters to ferry them to safety.

Water levels had risen by 20 centimetres (eight inches) on Wednesday morning alone, Kulig said.

By Wednesday evening, 650 people had been evacuated. Four hundred fire-fighters, many of them from other towns, were involved in the operation.

Luckier residents were also doing their part.

"Shopkeepers have been coming spontaneously to bring food to the evacuees. The operation's well organised," said Pawel Rzesa, a petrol station employee.

Despite the danger, some residents were unwilling to abandon their homes or workplaces.

"I tried to persuade my boss to go, but he didn't want to. He stayed on the petrol station's roof," Rzesa told AFP.

Jerzy Binek, head of the volunteer fire service in Dzwikozy, around 10 kilometres (six miles) from Sandomierz, said he had faced a similar problem.

"We had a man who refused to be evacuated because his wife was too sick to be moved," he said.

Evacuated families carried tarpaulin bags into which they had hastily thrown all the clothes they could find.

Once on unflooded land, buses laid on by the Catholic charity Caritas drove them to schools transformed into temporary shelters. Other evacuees were planning to stay with family members.

"This is the second lot of flooding I've been through since 1997. It's horrible. I never thought I'd have to live through it again," said Maria Borecka, bursting into tears.

"My building was flooded up to the second floor. Those who lived on the floors above stayed behind," said Borecka, who was among the first to be evacuated.

Residents were trying to stave off flooding at a steelworks which is the main employer in the town. Others waited for boats carrying relatives, as the little vessels passed cars lying underwater. Rescuers picked up sodden pets.

"People need a lot of time to decide to leave their property behind," said Binek. "The situation is terrifying as well as dangerous for those who stay. They get caught out and don't know what to do."

Six people have been confirmed dead across southern Poland since the floods struck four days ago, and thousands have been evacuated.

The Vistula flows from southern Poland to the Baltic Sea in the north, raising fears that the swollen river will gradually spill over further downstream.

Poland has asked fellow European Union nations for help, and the 27-nation bloc formally kicked off an emergency operation on Wednesday.

Among the individual member states stepping in are France and Germany, promising high-pressure water pumps.

A joint rescue team from neighbouring Lithuania and its fellow Baltic states Latvia and Estonia was due to arrive on Thursday, after calling off a planned exercise in Latvia to come to the Poles' help.

Volunteers on Wednesday frantically sandbagged dykes on the River Sola near the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, an international symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of the Jews in occupied Poland during World War II.

The museum at the site has been closed to visitors since Monday, with staff moving archives up to safety on higher floors.

The floods have also hit Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

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