After a weekend of heavy rain, severe flooding in southern regions of Germany led several cities to declare a state of emergency and evacuate their citizens from the most affected areas. The water submerged streets and highways, broke dams and derailed a high-speed train. Even as the rain eased on Monday, emergency crews rushed to strengthen dams along rivers in anticipation of further flooding.
On Monday morning, a 43-year-old woman was found dead in her basement in the Bavarian district of Neuburg-Schrobenhausen, local authorities said. She had been missing since Saturday night.
Several hours later, rescuers pumping water from a basement in Schorndorf in Baden-Württemberg found the bodies of a man and a woman, according to police. On Saturday, a firefighter died trying to save people, according to the district he served; Another firefighter has been missing since Saturday.
Tens of thousands of emergency workers, both local and from other regions, are responding to the disaster that hit the two southern German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Rescuers, including 800 soldiers, rescued people stranded in their homes and cars, built emergency dams and set up crisis shelters.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday visited the small market town of Reichertshofen, about 35 miles north of Munich, and said the flooding represented a new reality as the effects of climate change are being felt in Central Europe.
“What’s also important to me is that we are very clear that this is not just an event that has been happening for centuries,” he told reporters, noting that he had visited four active flood sites this year alone.
“We must not neglect the task of stopping man-made climate change,” he told reporters on Monday. “This is also a lesson we must learn from this event and this disaster.”
Between midday Friday and midday Monday, between 120 and 160 liters of rain, or 30 to 40 gallons, per square meter (about 11 square feet) fell, more than typically falls in a month, according to Sebastian Altnau. , a Meteorologist at the German Meteorological Office.
The firefighter who became the first victim of the floods had gone out with three colleagues on a boat late Saturday to save a family trapped inside a building. Before reaching the house, the boat capsized. Although three of the firefighters managed to save themselves, the body of the fourth was found early Sunday morning, a district spokeswoman confirmed.
In the small town of Ebersbach in southwestern Baden-Württemberg, water broke through a road wall on Sunday evening. A video posted on the city’s Facebook shows how the water turned the road into an impassable river in seconds.
About 24 kilometers northeast, near Schwäbisch Gmünd, a sudden landslide derailed a high-speed train on Saturday night and buried a carriage, according to the national railway service. Rescuers were able to evacuate the train of its 185 passengers and no one was injured. After signaling with a flashlight, the driver was also rescued by rescue teams, he told the German newspaper Bild.
Over the weekend, several dams broke in both Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, in some cases causing flooding in entire neighborhoods. On Saturday in Reichertshofen, where the chancellor visited on Monday, two dams burst despite being fortified with sandbags, allowing the Baar River to flood neighborhoods. Around 5,000 emergency workers assisted in the rescue and evacuation operations.
Rescuers spent much of Monday guarding against flooding from larger rivers, which have swollen since the downpour. In the medieval Bavarian city of Regensburg in the southeast, emergency workers on Monday built a dam across the still-rising Danube River. On Monday afternoon, the level of the Danube measured more than six meters, or almost 20 feet, double what it was on Friday morning.
The flooding has brought to mind the disastrous Ahr Valley floods in 2021, in which 189 people died. Heavy rain, which scientists say was driven by climate change, caused the Ahr River to rise sharply, washing away buildings, bridges and roads. At the time, authorities were criticized for failing to adequately warn local people.
Nancy Faeser, who, as Germany’s interior minister, is responsible for disaster response, traveled with Scholz on Monday. She told local journalists that she could see that “lessons had been learned” from the Ahr disaster. “Coordination and organization works much better,” she said.