Dozens of people died after violent storms in western Germany. Houses collapse in a small town in the Eifel, and numerous people are missing. Elsewhere, too, the situation remains extremely tense.
Koblenz / Altena / Wuppertal – Whole stretches of land have been devastated, places cut off from the outside world, houses washed away: at least 42 people died after storms in western Germany. Dozens of people are missing in Rhineland-Palatinate. “We have never seen such a disaster. It is really devastating, ”said Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) on Thursday in Mainz.
The Cologne police alone reported 20 deaths in the region. In addition to two deaths found in Cologne, 15 have been reported from Euskirchen and three from Rheinbach, the police announced on Thursday afternoon.
The water masses in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler
In the village of Schuld in the Eifel, four houses were completely washed away and two others half washed away on Thursday night. According to the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior, 50 to 70 people are missing.
Other buildings in the disaster region are threatened with collapse. “We have never seen such a disaster. It is really devastating, ”said Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) in Mainz.
The situation in North Rhine-Westphalia also remains tense. After the heavy rain has subsided, the fire brigade and other emergency services are fighting in many places with the worsening flood situation. At least 15 people died.
Laschet in the storm region
NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) visited Altena in the Märkisches Kreis. A 46-year-old firefighter died there on Wednesday afternoon after rescuing a man from a flooded district. On Thursday, Altena was still cut off from the outside world.
The Union chancellor candidate found out about the situation in the district’s control center at the district administrator and the district fire chief, as the German press agency learned from NRW government circles. Then he drove to the city of Hagen, which was particularly hard hit by the storms, to get an idea of the situation there too. Laschet had broken off his trip through southern Germany and also canceled his participation in the CSU retreat in Seeon, Bavaria.
The exact extent of the disaster remains unclear
In Rhineland-Palatinate, the exact extent of the disaster in several districts and independent cities cannot yet be foreseen, according to the Interior Ministry. A large-scale rescue operation has been going on for hours. Police helicopters are on the way to rescue people from roofs or trees, Dreyer reported. The Bundeswehr is also helping with around 500 soldiers. There are a lot of missing people. Reaching them is difficult because the cellular network has partially failed.
Five people were killed in the Eifel district of Ahrweiler. According to previous knowledge, all of them died in the floods, said the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD). The entire district is affected by the storm. According to the police, several places were cut off from the outside world because of the flood.
Euskirchen district is also particularly affected
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the situation in the Euskirchen district is particularly dire. According to the authorities, eight people were killed there. The district did not initially provide more precise information on the cause of death. In several places the situation is very critical, it said. Sometimes there is no access to the places. In the district the communication has largely failed.
Many rivers and streams in the Eifel, Bergisches Land, Rhineland and Sauerland continued to flood on Thursday; they overflowed their banks on Wednesday and Thursday night. Streets were flooded, cellars overflowed. Thousands of firefighters were deployed across the country.
A caravan is swept away by the masses of water in the Voreifel
Fire brigade hides dead
In Cologne, two people were discovered dead in their basements that were full of water. The fire brigade found the dead woman and the dead man on missions late Wednesday evening, the police and public prosecutor announced on Thursday. In Solingen, an 82-year-old man died after falling in the flooded basement of his house. In the fall, his head got under water, said a spokeswoman for the Wuppertal police. A 77-year-old man from Kamen was killed in the submerged basement of his house.
Two firefighters died in the rescue operations in the Sauerland. A 46-year-old firefighter fell into the water on Wednesday afternoon in Altena after rescuing a man from a flooded district and was driven off. Almost two hours later, a 52-year-old firefighter collapsed while working in the area of the Werdohl-Elverlingsen power plant. Police said he died on Wednesday evening despite resuscitation and relief measures. According to initial findings, the accident was a health emergency.
In Rheinbach near Bonn, a dead woman was discovered on a street early Thursday morning. A connection with the storm, which also affected Rheinbach with flooded streets, is likely, said the Bonn police.
Evacuations in the Bergisches Land and the Eifel
In many places people had to be brought to safety from the floods. There were also large-scale power outages. The Bergisches Land and the Eifel were particularly affected. Rail traffic is also severely affected by the floods and continuous rain. The railway called for trips to and from North Rhine-Westphalia to be postponed if possible. Due to line closures, numerous S-Bahn and regional lines did not run or only to a limited extent, as Deutsche Bahn announced. There are also significant weather effects on the motorways.
Evacuations in Trier
After massive rainfall, around 1,500 people in Hückeswagen in the Bergisches Land have to leave their homes. “During the evacuation measures a lot has to be done by boat because the roads are no longer passable,” said a police spokesman on Thursday morning. The Kleineichen district below the Bevertalsperre is particularly affected. Two people were injured during the rescue operations.
However, the situation does not seem quite as tense as it was during the night. “The dam that threatened to break is so far safe,” said the police spokesman. In the area around the dam, however, there are large-scale floods.
On Thursday, the flood-carrying river Inde flooded a dike near the lignite mine in Inden near Aachen and flowed into the mine. The search for an employee missing there was interrupted in the afternoon, said a police spokesman. The search with a helicopter and thermal imaging camera has so far been unsuccessful. According to information from the opencast mine operator RWE, the mining operation remained interrupted. The water of the Inde continues to flow into the opencast mine, but the water level is falling.
DWD expects the weather to relax
According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the peak of the extreme rainfall in parts of Germany has been exceeded. The DWD meteorologist Marco Manitta expected “a relaxation of the weather” on Thursday. Although there could still be “punctual heavy rain”, this was no longer as widespread as last night, said Manitta of the German press agency. “The potential for severe weather drops significantly.”
According to Manitta, the greatest amounts of precipitation occurred in a wide strip from the Sauerland over the Bergisches Land and the Eifel, the greater Cologne / Bonn area to the border with Luxembourg. The front runner was Rheinbach-Todenfeld (Rhein-Sieg district in North Rhine-Westphalia) with 158 millimeters of water in the measurement period of 24 hours – most of which fell from the sky in a shorter period of time, as the expert explained. dpa
