widthJust a few weeks after the flood destroyed her family-run restaurant and her hometown, when she heard on the radio that the German authorities no longer listed it as a disaster area, Paddy Amanatidis felt like she had been punched.
“When you don’t have electricity, clean water, or heating, it’s hard to say everything is normal,” she said.
It’s been almost two months since western Germany Experienced a catastrophic flood A heavy downpour caused the Rhine’s tributary Ahr to rise by 7 meters, enveloping everything on its path and extending it far beyond the bank. At least 133 people died in the Ahr Valley alone, and about 50 people died elsewhere.
Amanatidis recently stood in the courtyard of her ruined Mediterranean restaurant, Pearl, In the town Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Coordinate the efforts of chefs, waiters, friends and family to build a new terrace.
“Currently we are mixing concrete instead of pizza dough,” she joked. In the past few weeks, they have removed 40 tons of debris from the restaurant. “Soil, silt and rubble, full of feces. I came out with a rash. When we realized we couldn’t save the pizza oven my father installed 40 years ago, my sister and I cried,” she said.
Although the muddy water that even reached some roofs has now been basically cleared, it is still a desolate scene. The buildings have become dirty hollow shells, and their owners are waiting for news from the local construction office whether they can be rebuilt or must be demolished. Railroad tracks hang like rope ladders, hillsides slide into valleys, and huge trash tips dot the landscape. About 42,000 people were affected, many of whom lost their homes.
But throughout the region, arduous reconstruction work is in full swing, with generators and dehumidifiers humming in the air, and jackhammers and mechanical excavators roaring. This week, the Bundestag approved a 30 billion euro rescue fund. Those who are uninsured or underinsured will receive 80% of the funds for reconstruction costs.
“The slow recovery process has begun,” said Heike Heideck, the administrative director of Ehrenwall’sche psychiatry and neurology clinic, which was forced to evacuate patients to the top floor on the night of the flood. But he said that many Ahrweilers are dealing with psychological effects. “Whenever it rains, we get a little nervous,” he said. “Some of our employees have to face the fact that they are now patients themselves and are undergoing trauma therapy.”
Amanatidis feels like living in a disaster area. The heating will not appear until March, and she has to go to the boyfriend’s house in Bonn to take a bath.
As for this month’s federal elections, or views on the political impact of the biggest disaster Germany Since the end of the Second World War, what she may have faced is that she has nothing to offer other than shrugging her shoulders.
“I am in my own world now,” she said. “I can’t do anything except live in the present and focus on hoping to gather my family on this terrace again. The election is not in my focus.”
This sentiment is very common. Even politicians seem to have no appetite.
Mechthild Heil, Ahrweiler’s local parliamentarian and member of the Christian Democrats, said in an interview outside her rubble-surrounded office: “No one is interested in the election. People here need emergency assistance, knowing that electricity and water have been restored and are safe and reliable. They are. I’m most afraid of winter without heating.”
Many people will be forced to move into other residences in the winter, and it is predicted that as many as one-third of them will never return.
Next to the remains of a brick bridge in Insul, 60 of the 62 bridges on Ahr have collapsed. Martin Schmitt, Ahrweiler’s Green Party candidate, showed how the river turned from the left side of the valley to the right side, leaving several riverside houses in ruins .
“Some mayors have said’we will show that river’ and want to change it back to the pre-flood route,” Schmidt said. “Although experts have clear evidence that we need to reconsider thoroughly, they still hope to continue riverside residential development.
“I am worried that even after this disaster, we will still follow the same old path, not letting nature have its own space where we shouldn’t build.”
Although people generally expect them to benefit from the scale of the disaster Experts attribute largely to the climate crisis And the sad lack of climate protection, the Green Party is struggling painfully with the fact that it is showing empathy and Seems to be taking advantage of the disaster.
“We have a dilemma,” Schmidt admitted. “Say’we are right’ and it is not very pleasant to see what we have been warning about for 30 years now become a reality.
“And I can hardly walk through town with a megaphone and put up election posters. In this case, the best thing I can do — elections are almost out of reach for most people here — -It’s to show up, talk to people, get them in touch with each other, and mediate between someone I know who has a dehumidifier and someone I met someone in need.”
Ahrtalers said that it is this kind of hands-on, direct action and solidarity that keeps them moving forward: a creative and energetic way to accomplish difficult tasks and restore some ostensible normality.
In the field next to the Haribo candy factory in Grafschaft, volunteers set up a huge camp, with chefs, medical staff and trauma consultants providing round-the-clock service.
David Müller, a young blacksmith from Middle Franconia, is always ready to sharpen the chisels essential to the restoration work. He said that he managed 350 the night before and worked until 2.30 in the morning. Trumpeter Franz Josef Graf from Bavaria played Anvil Polka with him. Graf considered himself a music therapist, and he found a place on the hillside, from where his tunes—from Strange Grace to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah—were spread throughout the valley. “I once held adult men in my arms, and they have burst into tears,” he said. “In my life, I have never felt more useful.”
software Developed by event organizer Promote the efficient allocation of helpers based on where they are most needed, from demolishing or rebuilding family homes to clearing one of the many local vineyards to removing debris from school buildings.
“We have no choice but to take things in our own hands and organize ourselves, otherwise things will happen too slowly, too rigidly or not at all,” said Thomas Putz, whose orthopedics business was hit by the flood. It is currently coordinating volunteer activities of private organizations with more than 100,000 helpers.
He said he has deliberately excluded politics from rescue work after groups including far-right and new crown virus skeptics tried to infiltrate the rescue team.
“When they arrived, I thanked everyone and told them they were the best, but also emphasized that we don’t want any influential people or people who come here to promote their own political interests. We need to get this valley out of it. The chaos we are in, this includes filtering it to exclude things that have no place here.”
He said his message also politely extended to elected politicians.
Angela Merkel’s party’s candidate for chance and her first-choice successor, Armin Laschet, was photographed after laughing at a joke in a flood-stricken town during a solemn speech by the German President , Aroused strong opposition. It is repeatedly mentioned locally, but it may cause Laschet to lose the election.
“It would be great if they came to collect their own impressions,” Pütz said. “But I told them politely that we hope to stay and continue working.”
At the garbage dump, Marcus Zintel, a construction worker from St Ingbert, 210 kilometers away, arrived as a volunteer a few days after the floods. He said that the tension at the site was increasing. “We often meet political influencers who come here with drone cameras and argue in front of the camera that the massive waste here proves that the authorities have done nothing, and this just reflects the scale of the disaster,” he said. “When we arrived the first thing every morning, the site was full again.”
He said that the climate crisis is a topic rarely discussed. “The strange thing is that people prefer to say that this is a state of failure. We need to restore the river to its pre-flood water course and restore things to their original state. This idea is absurd.”
In a trailer in the Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler parking lot, Silke Wolf, the association’s volunteer hairdresser Barber angel, Is busy cutting. She said that although she intends to vote, she may ruin her vote because the election “is like choosing between cholera and plague.” She doesn’t trust any party, especially all the green parties.
“It feels like the Green Party is not grasping the big picture. It takes more than just an electric car to solve the chaos we are in-I can’t afford it anyway -” she said. “Whether it is the coronavirus or the flood, the universe has given us a negative side. Now is the time for those in power to realize this.”
