Nearly 130 dead and many missing in devastating floods in Germany and Belgium

Clear the disaster areas, restore electricity, quantify the damage: a titanic task began after the deadly floods in western Europe, including Germany, which is still looking for many missing.

Almost 130 people in total were killed in these unusually severe weather conditions, which also killed in Belgium, while Luxembourg and the Netherlands also faced a sudden rise in water levels over part of their region. territory.

The inhabitants who were able to take shelter Wednesday evening, when the floods started, are gradually returning to their homes.

Scenes of desolation await them in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, the affected regions of western Germany: destroyed houses, torn trees, overturned cars, collapsed roads and bridges, cut networks. At least 108 people have died.

“For 48 hours, it’s been a nightmare, we shoot here but we can not do anything”, explains Cornelia Schlösser, contemplating the sad state of the family bakery, in the village of Schuld, drowned in the waves. “In a few minutes, a wave was in the house,” said the fifty-year-old to AFP.

In all the affected localities, firefighters, civil protection, municipal officials, soldiers – some driving tanks – have begun the colossal work of clearing and cleaning up the piles of muddy debris that often clog the streets.

“We have to assume that we will find other victims”

“The task is immense”, admitted the mayor of Solingen, a city in the south of the Ruhr area. The scale of the disaster is only beginning to appear.

We have to pump water, assess the solidity of damaged buildings, some of which will have to be demolished, restore electricity, gas, telephones, and house the people who have lost everything.

The disruption of communication networks, which makes many people unreachable, complicates any quantification of the number of missing.

“We have to assume that we will find other victims,” ​​predicted Carolin Weitzl, mayor of Erfstadt, not far from Cologne, where a huge landslide swept away land and houses. Head of State Frank-Walter Steinmeier has planned to visit this devastated town on Saturday.

The government has indicated that it is working to set up a special aid fund, when the damage is expected to reach several billion euros.

Solidarity is also being organized, with appeals for donations launched throughout the country, local collections, financial support promised by large companies, such as the car manufacturer Volkswagen.

The damage is “so great that it will occupy us for a long time,” warned Rhineland-Palatinate leader Malu Drayer, while her North Rhine-Westphalian counterpart Armin Laschet spoke of a “disaster of” historical magnitude “.

After the rupture of a dam, a new evacuation in Germany

Leader of the conservative CDU party, candidate for the succession of Chancellor Angela Merkel and favorite in the polls for the legislative elections of September 26, Armin Laschet demanded, like the entire political class, “to accelerate the pace “in the fight against climate change.

This disaster “changes the electoral campaign”, placing the issue of climate at the center of debates, says the newspaper Spiegel. Angela Merkel, returning from a visit to the United States, is planning to visit the flood scene soon.

In the west of Germany crossed by the axis of the Rhine, it is mainly small rivers, little protected, which suddenly emerged from their beds under the effect of rains in the form of a deluge, invading dozens. inhabited areas often built on flood zones.

If the rains must stop this weekend in the most affected regions, hundreds of people were still evacuated on Friday evening, after the rupture of a dam in the Cologne region.

In Belgium also, as the water recedes, “we will probably still find catastrophic situations”, judged the mayor of Liège, Christine Defraigne.

In this country, the tragedy which left at least 20 dead and twenty missing, according to a still provisional assessment, is “unprecedented”, said Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who declared a day of national mourning on Tuesday .

With AFP