German officials defended their actions before the severe floods last week, which caught many cities and towns in Western Europe by surprise and killed 196 people, but they admitted that more lessons could be learned from the disaster.
As the floods receded on Monday, the authorities continued to search for more victims and stepped up efforts to clean up large swaths of wetlands in western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.
So far, Germany’s worst-hit Rhineland-Palatinate state has confirmed 117 deaths, neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia has 47 deaths, Bavaria has at least one death, and heavy rains have occurred in some areas. And flooding all weekend. The death toll in Belgium is 31.
The authorities said they might find more victims in the destroyed houses.
Meteorological officials had predicted that heavy downpours would even cause small rivers to swell rapidly, but many people in the affected areas did not appear to be warned of potentially catastrophic damage-usually in the middle of the night.
Federal and state authorities have been criticized by some opposition politicians for this disaster, which comes as the September national election approaches. But Horst Seehofer, the Minister of the Interior, refuted claims that federal officials had made mistakes and said that the warning had been passed on to local authorities that “made decisions on disaster protection.”
“I have to say that some of the things I hear are cheap election speech,” Seehofer said during a visit to the Steinbach Reservoir in western Germany. The authorities said they no longer worry about dam failure. “It’s really not the time to do this.”
Seehofer emphasized this message during a visit to Bad Neuenahr in the worst-hit area on Monday, but said that once the emergency rescue phase is over, the authorities will have to learn a lesson.
“As long as we can improve anything-alarms, equipment… we all have to do this,” he said. “We owe the affected families, especially the victims.”
The head of the German Civil Defense Agency stated that the meteorological department had “predicted relatively well” and that the country was fully prepared for flooding in major rivers.
However, Armin Schuster told ZDF TV on Sunday night that “it is usually impossible to say which place will be hit by how much water before half an hour.” He said that 150 warning notices have been issued through apps and media.
He said “we will have to investigate” where the alarm sounded and where it did not sound.
Officials in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate stated that they were fully prepared for the floods, and the municipality had received the warning and took action.
But the state’s Minister of the Interior Roger Levents said after visiting the severely affected Schulder village with Prime Minister Angela Merkel on Sunday, “Of course, we encountered technical infrastructure—electricity, etc.—a little bit. The problem of the child being destroyed…”
He said the local authorities “reacted quickly.” “But this is an instantaneous water explosion. …you can have the best preparation and alarm situation (but) if the alarm device is destroyed and taken away by the building, it will be a very difficult situation.” The mobile phone network was also paralyzed by the flood.
After the national test basically failed in September 2020 (the first in 30 years), a wider range of questions about the German emergency alert system emerged. The sirens did not sound in many places or were removed after the end of the Cold War. Push alerts from the national alert app came late or not all.
Shuster, the head of the civil defense agency, pointed out that a civil defense reform plan was launched earlier this year, which included encouraging local authorities to install more sirens. Germany does not have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk that it is exploring this possibility.
As local communities face the arduous task of rebuilding infrastructure such as destroyed houses and bridges and water supply systems, Merkel’s cabinet will formulate a package of immediate and medium-term financial assistance on Wednesday.
At the Steinbach Reservoir, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, stated that the dam is designed to deal with risks that may occur once every 10,000 years.
“This has been exceeded in the past few days,” he said. “This is a possibility that no one expected.”
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Associated Press writer Frank Jordans contributed to the Steinbach Reservoir.
© 2021 Canadian Press
