Mountains of rubble and a destroyed infrastructure: the helpers work in the flood areas. There is criticism of crisis management.
Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler / Euskirchen – According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Ahrweiler district proclaimed the disaster late.
In addition to information published online, the district administration received several automated e-mails from the responsible state office for the environment in the course of the evening, in which the forecast enormous water level of almost seven meters was reported, according to the report. The Ahrweiler district administration did not want to comment on this report on Sunday at the request of the German Press Agency and referred to a later date.
In an answer to the dpa it says: “We are currently still in the process of coping with the disaster situation. The top priority for the district and district administrator Dr. Jürgen Pföhler to restore supplies to the people in the flood area. Everyone involved is working on this “around the clock”, so to speak. “
The Kiel crisis expert Frank Roselieb sees the responsibility with the district administrator. Disaster control is part of the core function of every district chief and every mayor, he told the “Rhein-Zeitung”. “In the job description of a district administrator or a lord mayor, crisis management is one of the few activities that cannot really be delegated.”
In Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate, the technical relief organization built a new temporary bridge in the destroyed infrastructure. In Bad Münstereifel in North Rhine-Westphalia, a flood-damaged bridge was supposed to be blown up on Sunday. Dozens of bridges had been damaged or destroyed in the crisis regions.
The cause of the flood? More than half of the population believes that the storm disaster in western Germany is the result of man-made climate change. In a survey by the polling institute YouGov, almost 55 percent of those questioned took this view.
The President of the Federal Association of the Construction Industry, Peter Huebner, was optimistic about the reconstruction in the disaster areas. The clean-up work went “incredibly quickly, and I am optimistic that we will tackle the reconstruction quickly,” he told the “Tagesspiegel” (Monday edition). “In six months, people should be able to live more or less normally in the Ahr Valley, and the most important roads should also be ready by the end of the year.” Some bridges and railway lines require more time. “It should take two or three years, as the experience in other flood areas shows.” Dpa
