Drivers have to be rescued from cars, a worker dies in an accident. In a town in Thuringia, the sirens ring in the morning. Storms raged over Germany on Sunday too – and there should 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.
Several places in Thuringia were badly affected. In the small town of Gierstädt near Erfurt, the sirens rang on Sunday morning. Shortly afterwards the village was under water. The police cordoned off Gierstädt temporarily – all access roads were no longer passable. “The water shot out of the forest,” said Mayor Ulf Henniger. Mud masses were also washed into the place.
Previously, on Friday evening in the district of Mosbach in the Thuringian community of Wutha-Farnroda, a tidal wave streamed knee-high through the town and flooded houses, gardens and garages. Several cars were swept away, and some people had to be freed. 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 debris, and a road through the forest was badly washed away.
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. In Rastede in Lower Saxony, in addition to many cellars, two supermarkets were full on Sunday night. Even at the main train station in Stuttgart, the water was at times up to 30 centimeters high, as a police spokesman announced on Sunday.
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. In Düsseldorf, a twelve-year-old was critically injured 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 over the course of the Saturday 330. At up to 100 liters per square meter per hour, the police said there were “flooded streets, countless manhole covers that jumped out, cellars that were filled with water and drains”. In Fulda the emergency number 112 of the fire brigade was temporarily unavailable, the 110 was “completely overloaded” according to the police.
There were also numerous weather-related traffic accidents in many regions of Germany. Most of them went well. Roads that were hollowed out or buried under mud had to be closed locally. Several sailing boats and a catamaran capsized in the storm on Lake Constance on Saturday. An international distress alarm was triggered, police, fire brigades, water rescue and a helicopter from the Ministry of the Interior were in action. All crews could be brought to safety.
A thunderstorm also had consequences for an RTL livestream: The No Angels actually wanted to talk about their future as a girl group on Friday evening, but a thunderstorm thwarted the women’s bill – 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. The interview was later posted on rtl.de.
Even at the beginning of the week, the risk of thunderstorms is not averted. “The humid, humid and thundery air mass will keep us in suspense over the next few days,” said the German Weather Service (DWD) on Sunday in Offenbach. In advance, it is hardly possible to narrow down which places will be specifically affected.
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German Weather Service
