Belgrade Danube Ice
People try break the ice around a floating restaurant on Danube river in Belgrade Reuters

In Belgrade, Serbia, a swift change in the weather has caused popular floating restaurant Alexander to sink completely into the Danube river.

After weeks of record-breaking cold weather spread across Europe, long-awaited rising temperatures have caused a frozen Danube to thaw. On Sunday afternoon, ice floats 1.5 feet thick crushed hundreds of boats in Belgrade and damaged some of the floating restaurants and night clubs along the river, according to reports.

We are trying to salvage whatever we can, only a handful of boats remained intact from about a hundred we had in the marina, boat owner Mihailo Svilaric told Reuters.

The ice was so fast that we could do nothing to prevent this, boat owner Dragan Jovanovic told the news agency. The damage will be hundreds of thousands of euros for sure.

There is fear that melting ice and snow will cause the city to flood.

At this moment we don’t know what will happen, Nikola Marjanovic, a Serbian water supply system official, told The Associated Press.

The cold spell resulted in 20 deaths in Serbia and hundreds more throughout the rest of Europe. The thaw has caused at least one death -- in Romania, a man when an icicle broke off the roof of his shop and fell on his head.

Serbia is still in a state of emergency and thousands of people in remote villages were cut off by massive snow fall, which closed roads and cut off electricity to some areas. The severe weather has reportedly caused 500 million euros ($660 million) in damages in Serbia.

About 1,777 miles of the Danube was frozen at the height of the cold spell, with ice spreading through nine countries from the Black Sea to Austria.