COLOGNE, Germany -- The Rhine surged Monday toward its highest level of the century, as rain continued across Western Europe, swelling waterways, inundating ancient buildings and pouring mud into homes.


More than 20 people have died and more than 15,000 have been evacuated since rivers began overflowing their banks in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg over the past week.


By noon Monday, the flood level in Cologne had already surpassed the 10.63 meters of December 1993, and was forecast to top the 20th century mark of 10.69 meters registered in January 1926.


Reinhard Vogt, head of the emergency center in Cologne, said the Rhine was rising about a centimeter an hour. The center said the water was expected to exceed the 1926 level around midnight.


Vogt said that with the Old Town district and other low-lying areas of Cologne already flooded since midnight Friday, no other areas in the city were immediately threatened. The famed Cologne cathedral, near the city's main train station, was not threatened.


In Holland, at least 65,000 residents in the east were urged to flee surging Rhine floodwaters in the country's biggest civilian evacuation in more than 40 years, officials said.


Roads were clogged as thousands of cars, buses and army trucks headed out of the strickened area.


The latest evacuation brought to 80,000 the total number of people on the move in the south and east of the Netherlands.


"This is the biggest Dutch evacuation for 40 years ... since 1953 when the sea dykes broke in Zeeland," said Jan Meijer, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the Hague, which is coordinating the national evacuation. The government was desperate to avoid a repetition of the great floods of February 1953 when more than 1,800 people perished after the sea-walls along the southern Dutch province of Zeeland collapsed.


Dutch Telecom asked people not to make phone calls to the affected regions, to ease the load on the lines.


The French government said 15 people have died in France and five were reported missing since the floods began a week ago. Four people died in Germany, two in Belgium, and a German died in Austria when a tree fell on his car.


Some 6,000 people have been evacuated, and at least 40,000 homes were damaged in France, said Prime Minister Edouard Balladur's office.


The Ardennes, in eastern France, was the worst stricken region and the Meuse river was at record levels. Schools were shut down, and thousands of people could not get to work.


In Paris, the Seine river appeared to be stabilizing, although highways that run along its banks were closed, police said.


In Belgium, the situation was much the same as Sunday, with towns and villages along the swollen Meuse river flooded. In the Belgian countryside, dozens of homes had water up to a meter high lapping halfway up their entrance doors.


Shipping on all of the flooded rivers has been stopped indefinitely.


(AP, Reuters)