Heavy downpours discharged in Saxony on Saturday. Because of floods and landslides, rescue workers were deployed in hundreds, especially in Saxon Switzerland and Eastern Saxony.
Bad Schandau / Bautzen – Immense rainfall caused heavy flooding in parts of Saxony on Saturday. In Saxon Switzerland, several localities of cities and municipalities were no longer accessible. Neustadt, Sebnitz, Bad Schandau, Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna and Gohrisch are particularly affected, the district office informed in the evening. The railway line between Bad Schandau and Dečin in the Czech Republic was closed. “The situation is tense, but manageable,” said the situation center of the Ministry of the Interior in Dresden at the request of the German Press Agency.
According to the state flood center, it rained more than 100 liters per square meter within 24 hours in the catchment area of the Kirnitzsch and Sebnitz rivers. In Lichtenhain-Mittelndorf it was 110 liters, in Weifa 104 liters. As a result, the water levels of numerous rivers swelled rapidly. Alert level 4 was exceeded on the Polenz, in the lower reaches of the Kirnitzsch, the Sebnitz and the Lachsbach there was an “extreme rise in water level”. “Heavy floods are to be expected,” the experts warned in the evening.
The regional control center in Dresden spoke of more than 250 missions since the afternoon. In Saxon Switzerland, streets and cellars have been flooded and slopes have slipped. In addition to smaller rivers that were extremely swollen, the large amount of water has made its way down the slopes, it said. For the time being, nothing was known of injuries or major evacuations.
For large parts of Saxony, the German Weather Service warned of storms up to level 3 of 4 on Saturday into the night. As a result, there were numerous rescue workers deployed in other regions too – for example in eastern Saxony in the Bautzen and Görlitz districts. There too, heavy rain had flooded the streets and cellars. In addition, the water levels in the Lusatian Neisse area rose considerably. Alert level 4 was exceeded at the gauge in Zittau.
Problems with flooded basements and basements were also reported locally from West Saxony, for example in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Oberlungwitz and Wüstenbrand. Some residents built blockades to protect their homes.
The disruption of the railway line between Bad Schandau and Dečin is expected to last until Sunday afternoon, informed Deutsche Bahn. “Long-distance trains end and begin in Dresden Hauptbahnhof.” In long-distance traffic, it affects the Hamburg-Berlin-Dresden-Prague connection. There were also failures in local traffic, replacement traffic by buses could not be set up due to difficult road conditions, it said. dpa
