DHe rolled up his jeans, didn’t wear shoes or socks, with a cigarette at the corner of his mouth, and the man crawled in from the window on the first floor. Water accumulates inside. “Be careful, it’s not worth it,” said his wife, who was still taking photos of streets that looked completely different 24 hours ago. “It happened so fast,” she said. “I just caught my cat and a few contracts, and I went out.” Now they closed the windows so that the looters wouldn’t want to take away things damaged by the flood. On Frauenthaler Strasse in Erfstadt-Blessem, southwest of Cologne, the water is slowly receding. It left dilapidated cars, crooked garage doors and a lot of dirt. Some residents have started to dig their apartments, but most of the houses are still abandoned. The sirens kept wailing.
A huge hole was formed in the ground of Blessem, the street slipped and the whole house disappeared. A stable was washed away by the flood. “Someone died,” a spokesperson for the Cologne District Government said. On Friday afternoon, Frank Rock, the district administrator in charge of the Rhein-Erft area, could not tell how many people there were. Fifty people were rescued by the boat.
The tide comes very fast. Within ten minutes, the sink will be flooded. There is almost no time to warn people. “This is a catastrophic situation we have never had here before,” Rock said. There was an unpleasant smell of gasoline throughout the place, and the defective gas pipe made it difficult to rescue Blessem. Some residents were taken away by helicopter.
Some old people cannot save themselves from the flood
Renate Richard ran across a puddle not far from her house. She was lucky, it was a bit high. Because the neighbor’s water tank was broken, her garden was filled with heating oil, but other than that, only the cellar was flooded. “Most of the time, old people are dead, and young people are more likely to save themselves than 80-year-olds. I have nothing to say,” Richard said. An hour later, at the cordon of a neighboring village, a police officer would tell residents that the people who died in Blytheham had returned home, even though they had evacuated early.
Everywhere Erft has flown, where it crosses bridges and streets, there are such obstacles: in front of them there are police, technical rescue organizations or Fire departmentA fire chief said he has not received the map yet. In many places, Friday’s fire brigade can only wait for the water to recede. Sometimes there is a lack of ships or heavy equipment. At the same time, the Hamburg Marine Police Unit, which came as reinforcements, or the Disaster Emergency Service Team from Bavaria, also continued to drive on the streets. Emergency calls come from all directions.
