Motorists have to be rescued from their vehicles, a main train station is full and a worker has a fatal accident. Storms are sweeping across Germany – and there could be more.
Berlin (dpa) – Lightning struck, heavy rain flooded cellars and underpasses, cars were washed away: In many places in Germany, storms caused immense damage at the weekend.
The district of Mosbach in the Thuringian community of Wutha-Farnroda was badly affected, where on Friday evening a tidal wave had streamed through the village and flooded houses, gardens and garages. Several cars were washed away, and people had to be freed from three of them. The mayor reckoned damage in the millions, and a building was feared a partial fall from a landslide.
There were also landslides in Hennef in North Rhine-Westphalia after a storm on Friday evening. A car was washed into a stream, the area of a swimming pool was covered with mud and rubble, and a road running through the forest was almost completely undermined on one side.
At Stuttgart Hbf, the water was 30 centimeters high
In Laatzen near Hanover, the fire brigade took a senior citizen out of a flooded pedestrian underpass on Saturday. The 82-year-old was trapped in stagnant water about 30 centimeters high with eight young people. Firefighters carried the pensioner outside. Even at the main train station in Stuttgart, the water was up to 30 centimeters high at times, as a police spokesman said.
A 65-year-old also died in the city when a scaffold was washed away on a construction site on Friday and carried away several workers. A twelve-year-old was seriously injured in Düsseldorf after lightning struck near her group of cyclists on Friday evening. The girl was believed to be electrocuted and fell onto the street, where she was hit by a car.
In the Zwickauer Land in Saxony, an underpass under the Autobahn 4 was flooded. “A car was up to the top in the water and had to be towed,” said a police spokesman on Sunday. An underpass at an exit from the federal highway 93 also had to be closed due to meter-high water masses.
In many places, the fire brigade had to move out several times within a short period of time. In East Hesse alone there were hundreds of missions – in the Fulda district as early as 330 on Saturday afternoon. The main focus was on flooded streets, squeezed out manhole covers and full cellars.
Lots of weather-related traffic accidents
There were also four accidents on the motorways around Fulda, the police said. There were also numerous weather-related traffic accidents in other regions of Germany. Most of them went well.
A thunderstorm also had consequences for an RTL live stream. Actually, the No Angels wanted to talk about their future as a girl group there on Friday evening. But a violent thunderstorm thwarted the women’s plans – the interview was interrupted.
“In such a big storm, it can happen that the connection between the cells no longer works,” explained a technician on the Cologne broadcaster’s website. “That was exactly the problem today, too many cells were no longer connected to one another and we could not completely broadcast our program live.” The interview was later posted on rtl.de.
At the start of the new week, according to the DWD weather service, it should remain warm, and storms can fall again in the middle and south of Germany. Only for Wednesday do the meteorologists promise that the weather will calm down.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210605-99-873234 / 3
German Weather Service
RTL report on the interrupted interview
