Bdith Reinert lives only a few meters away from her neighbor. You are on the right of Prüm and the others are on the left. A bridge separates the two houses-usually. But since Wednesday, everything is gone for Waxweiler in the Eifel district of Bitburg-Prüm. The continuous rainfall around 5 pm caused the water levels in Prüm and Weiherbach, which flow through the city center, to rise. The creek became a torrent. More than 50 houses were flooded. Both families are locked at home.
“The house is shaking”
For the neighbors of Reinert, who lives on the right of Prüm, these are hours full of fear. Because the walls of the old mill were in danger of collapsing, they had to save themselves on the roof. Stefan Hagdorn, the military leader who coordinated the operation in Vaxweiler, said: “The house is shaking.”
He and his helper tried everything possible to save the three.But neither a boat nor a current swimmer DLRG Coming to meet the water mass. The rescue attempt using a crane also failed. At about 4 in the morning, the troops requested a rescue helicopter-because there were no helicopters, the family had to wait on the roof until the federal police sent them to safety at about 12 noon.
Edith Reinert put her head out of the window, which was once the other bank of the Prüm. From the second floor, she watched in horror at what was happening in front of her house, her house protruding out of the water like a rock. The water in her yard hadn’t reached her knees, and the front door was closed. The streets are full of dirt, debris and debris. The fire hose emptied the flooded cellar nearby.
Six firefighters stood in confusion in front of the wreckage of the front bridge. The flood washed a tree and a 16-ton wooden bridge, about one kilometer long, and then hit the bridge in the center of Waxweiler. A few meters further ahead, a tractor stopped on the wall of a house. Hawthorn shook his head. “There is nothing to hold.”
All of this happened in front of Reinert’s house. However, walking is not their choice. “I stay here,” she yelled from outside the window to overwhelm the roar of water. Because she was at home with her 92-year-old mother, she was bedridden and almost blind. Evacuate, “I just don’t want to treat her like that.” And the house is not dangerous. But the mud residue on the windows on the first floor indicated that the water was also two meters high.
“We just can’t help them”
About 30 kilometers away from Messerich, three rescuers encountered a similar situation: the rescuers were trapped in turbulent water. “We just can’t help them. That’s the worst for me. There are tears in my eyes,” said Willi Schlöder, a disaster control inspector in the area. They stayed on the roof of the car for five hours. Schlöder said: “We think the car will be washed away every second.” At the last moment, the three of them were rescued by an excavator.
