War-Zone Like Landscape Close to My Home

The disaster in Germany can be a sign of climate change

It is unprecedented what happened on 15th July, barely a month ago, in Germany and some of the neighboring countries. Almost 200 hundred people died, cities look like a war-zone with many having lost their homes. I live exactly in the region the most hit by the flood in Germany.

We saw earlier the images of floods in the USA, Haiti, Bangladesh, India, and other far countries on TV, but we never thought that such a thing could happen in Europe. Experts say this is one of the disastrous signs of climate change.

After the first shock, news fades away in a few weeks, but victims only slowly recover from the losses.

What happened exactly?

We knew from the media that the weather would turn bad. They talked about the historic amount of rain approaching West Germany. However, this region never lacked precipitation. During the one year I live in Germany, we were alarmed so many times about the unfavorable weather. But mostly, we get a fraction of what they foresaid.

In the afternoon of 15th July, the rain became more intense. Yes, it was raining cats and dogs, but it still did not look disastrous. At least not something that put me in fear. While I was sleeping worriless, I had no idea that some streets away houses got utterly flooded.

Just a few kilometers drive away from my home, houses collapsed, and people died. Looking out of the window in the morning, I did not see anything remarkable apart from the playground being soaked in water. I went on my usual morning jogging, and this was when I faced the damage caused by the rain.

Gardens, houses, garages were standing half in water. The small stream crossing our town that is hardly noticeable otherwise erupted with full power from the river bed and flooded the sports field and the nearby places. People were piling up rubbish along the streets, including furniture, washing machine, and everything that became unusable.

I was lucky. I live on the 3rd top floor of the building, and fortunately, the roof proved to be resistant.

The radio talked about hundreds of people missing and that the number of dead is increasing. Then they constantly updated the data until the death toll was almost 200 hundred and the number of people still missing around 2000.

The flooding caused by heavy rains devastated towns across western Germany and Belgium and Austria, parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.

Could it have been avoided?

It was hard to understand what happened. It was not raining for days or weeks. It was just one day with a historic amount of rain. But nobody was prepared for that. It raises the question: “Could we have avoided?”

Many say yes. There will be thorough investigations to reveal the responsibilities.

We have a trial alarm almost every week. But that evening, there was none, and everything happened so fast. Around 11 pm, when most people were already sleeping. The bigger cities in the region, like Köln and Bonn that lie along the Rhine, were slightly affected. Not like the countryside.

The river Ahr mercilessly buried the twin towns, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. They are well-known touristic places with charming traditional houses surrounded by wine slopes. Many Germans from Köln and Bonn spend their weekends and finish their hiking tour in one of the restaurants with a glass of beer.

The picturesque villages turned into rubbles and helicopters ascended to rescue the residents. Some found refuge on the top of the house roof floating on the surface of the water.

One of the pivotal highways of the region broke. I cannot imagine how. Cars disappeared under the water, and lorries were also hardly seen. Drivers quit their vehicles and tried to escape.

I also used to take this highway to go to work. It is closed until now.

Two days after the catastrophe, I had to get to work somehow. I relied on the GPS to show me alternative routes, but there were closures from every direction. As I drove through villages, crashed cars blocked the road partly. They were abandoned. Who knows what happened. Maybe it was carried by the water from a distance, or the driver just jumped out to save his life.

Somehow, I got to my place of work, but many of my colleagues could not leave their houses for several days. Their town was surrounded by the water, leaving no possibility for movement.

“I stepped out of my house, and there were corpses on the tree.”- A witness shared his experiences on the radio. It sounded so surreal.

First-hand experience from the crisis zone

When I had my first day off after the tragedy, I looked for an opportunity to assist as a volunteer in Bad Neuenahr, one of the badly damaged places only 15 minutes drive from my home.

I was impressed to see the countless volunteers lined up with buckets, spades, and other stuff that could be useful for the victims.

The town had no electricity and clean water. There were no streets anymore. We walked in boots in the mix of water and sewage covering the whole city. We went from door to door and stopped where somebody asked for help. The ground floors were destroyed, and the cellars were filled with water and mud.

“I just finished the renovation of my house.” — said the lady whom we were helping.

“I woke up because I heard noise and traffic in the street that is unusual at that time. Then I saw the water flooding. I wanted to save my car, and I drove to the parking of the supermarket. But I could not return any more. The water was so strong.”

“One week passed, and in one of the cellars, they still found a corpse. I’m lucky I did not lose anybody.”

A month after, there is still no water or electricity. People who lost their homes were offered to stay temporarily in hotel rooms or private apartments. They do not know if their house can be saved or have to be demolished. To make it worse, many of them turned out not to have a type of insurance that applies to natural disasters.

Final thoughts

It was far from the worst flood ever in the world that happened in Germany. But having it so close puts all that in a different perspective. It is good to hear how companies and private people showed solidarity with the victims and quickly offered tools and machines to assist them. Thousands of volunteers showed up as soon as it was permitted. But even though the rumbles are cleaned, the reconstruction will last long years.

If the current floods and forest fires are the consequences of climate change and become the new norm, we are standing ahead of a scary future.

Thank you for reading.

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