Severe flooding has occurred in southern Germany after heavy rain over the weekend, prompting several cities to declare a state of emergency and evacuate citizens from hard-hit areas. Streets and highways were flooded, dams collapsed, and high-speed trains derailed. Despite the rain stopping on Monday, emergency crews rushed to strengthen dams along the river in anticipation of further flooding.
According to local authorities, a 43-year-old woman was found dead in a basement in Bavaria's Neuburg-Schrobenhausen district on Monday morning. She had been missing since Saturday night.
According to police, the bodies of a man and a woman were discovered hours later by rescue workers pumping water from a basement in Schondorf, Baden-Württemberg. A firefighter died Saturday while trying to save a person, according to the district where he served. Another firefighter has been missing since Saturday.
Tens of thousands of emergency responders, locally and elsewhere, are responding to the disaster that has affected two southern German states, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. A response team of 800 soldiers rescued people trapped in their homes and cars, built emergency dams and set up crisis response facilities.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday during a visit to Reichertshofen, a small market town about 35 miles north of Munich, that flooding represents a new reality as the effects of climate change are felt in central Europe.
“What is important to me is that we are very confident that this is not just an event that has happened for centuries,” he told reporters, noting that he has visited four flood sites this year alone.
“We must not neglect our mission to stop man-made climate change,” he told reporters Monday. “This is also a lesson we must learn from this incident and disaster.”
Between noon Friday and noon Monday, 120 to 160 liters, or about 30 to 40 gallons, of rain fell per square meter (about 11 square feet). According to Sebastian Altnau, this is more than what usually falls in a month. Meteorologist at the German Meteorological Agency.
The firefighter, who became the first victim of the flood, arrived in a boat late Saturday with three colleagues to rescue a family stranded inside the building. The boat capsized before we even got home. Three of the firefighters were able to save their own lives, but the body of the fourth firefighter was discovered early Sunday morning, a regional spokesman confirmed.
In Ebersbach, a small town in southwestern Baden-Württemberg, water broke through a highway wall on Sunday night. A video posted to the city's Facebook feed shows how water turned a road into an impassable river in seconds.
A sudden landslide about 15 miles northeast near Schwäbisch Gmünd pushed a high-speed train off the tracks Saturday night, burying the car, according to the state rail service. Rescue workers evacuated 185 passengers from the train and no one was injured. The driver was also apprehended by rescuers after signaling with a flashlight, he told German newspaper Bild.
Several dams broke in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg over the weekend, flooding some entire regions. In Reichertshofen, which the prime minister visited on Monday, two dams collapsed on Saturday despite being reinforced with sandbags, causing the River Var to flood nearby areas. About 5,000 emergency personnel assisted in rescue and evacuation efforts.
Responders spent most of Monday trying to prevent flooding from larger rivers that had swollen after heavy rain. In the medieval city of Regensburg, in the southeastern state of Bavaria, emergency workers built a dam Monday along the Danube River as water levels continued to rise. On Monday afternoon, the level of the Danube River was measured at 6 meters, or almost 20 feet, twice as high as on Friday morning.
The floods have brought back memories of the disastrous Ahr Valley floods in 2021, which claimed 189 lives. Heavy rainfall caused by climate change has caused water levels in the River Aar to rise sharply, washing away buildings, bridges and roads, scientists say. Authorities at the time were criticized for failing to properly warn local residents.
Nancy Faeser, who is responsible for disaster response as Germany's interior minister, traveled with Chancellor Scholz on Monday. She told local reporters that she had “learned a lesson” from the Ar disaster. “Coordination and organization work much better,” she said.