Severe flooding in southern Germany after heavy rains over the weekend has led several towns to declare a state of emergency and evacuate residents in hard-hit areas. Floodwaters have flooded streets and highways, breached dams and caused a high-speed train to derail. Although the rain eased on Monday, rescue workers were still reinforcing dams along the river to prevent further flooding.
A 43-year-old woman was found dead in the basement of her home in the Bavaria district of Neuburg-Schrobenhausen on Monday morning, according to local authorities. She had been missing since Saturday evening.
Hours later, rescuers found the bodies of a man and a woman while pumping out water from a basement in Schorndorf, Baden-Württemberg, according to police. One firefighter died while trying to save people on Saturday; another has been missing since Saturday, according to the district he served.
Tens of thousands of local and other emergency workers are responding to the disaster, which has hit the southern German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Rescuers, including 800 soldiers, have rescued people trapped in homes and cars, built emergency dams and set up crisis shelters.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Reichetshofen, a small market town about 35 miles north of Munich, on Monday and said the floods represented a new reality in which the effects of climate change were becoming apparent in central Europe.
“It's also important for me to be very clear that this is not just an event that has been going on for centuries,” he told reporters, noting that he has visited four active flooding sites this year alone.
“We must not lose sight of the task of curbing man-made climate change. That is also the lesson we must draw from this incident and this disaster,” he told reporters on Monday.
Sebastian Altnau, a meteorologist with the German Weather Office, said 120 to 160 liters of rain, or about 30 to 40 gallons, fell per square meter (about 11 square feet) between noon Friday and noon Monday, more than a typical month's worth of rain.
The firefighter who became the first victim of the flooding set out on a boat with three colleagues on Saturday night to rescue a family trapped inside a building. Before they reached the house, the boat capsized. A spokesman for the district confirmed that while three firefighters managed to save themselves, the body of the fourth firefighter was found in the early hours of Sunday morning.
In the southwestern town of Ebersbach in Baden-Württemberg, floodwaters breached a motorway retaining wall on Sunday evening. City Facebook News It shows how water can turn a road into an impassable river in a matter of seconds.
According to the national railway department, a sudden mudslide pushed a high-speed train off the tracks and buried a carriage near Schwaebisch Gmuend, about 15 miles northeast, on Saturday evening. Rescuers successfully evacuated the 185 passengers on the train and no one was injured. The driver was also rescued by rescuers after signaling with a flashlight. He told German newspaper Bild.
Several dams failed over the weekend in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, some causing entire communities to be flooded. In the city of Reichertshofen, which the prime minister visited on Monday, two dams failed on Saturday, despite being reinforced with sandbags, allowing the Baar River to overflow the community. About 5,000 emergency workers assisted in the rescue and evacuation operations.
Rescue workers spent much of Monday guarding against flooding from the river, which has been rising since heavy rains. In the medieval city of Regensburg in the southeastern state of Bavaria, rescue workers on Monday built a dam along the Danube as the river continued to rise. On Monday afternoon, the Danube measured more than 6 meters, or nearly 20 feet — twice as high as it was on Friday morning.
Floods bring back catastrophic memories Ahr Valley Flooding In 2021, the rain killed 189 people. Scientists say the rain was caused by climate changeThe Aare River surged, causing buildings, bridges and roads to collapse. Authorities were criticized at the time for not giving adequate warning to local residents.
Nancy Fesser is Germany's interior minister, who is in charge of the disaster response. She traveled with Schulz on Monday. She told local reporters that she could see that “lessons had been learned” from the Ahr disaster. “The coordination and organization were much better,” she said.
