{"id":64965,"date":"2024-06-03T16:11:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T16:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/03\/floods-break-dams-and-submerge-highways-in-southern-germany\/"},"modified":"2024-06-03T16:11:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T16:11:04","slug":"floods-break-dams-and-submerge-highways-in-southern-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/03\/floods-break-dams-and-submerge-highways-in-southern-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Floods Break Dams and Submerge Highways in Southern Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/03\/multimedia\/03germany-floods-pgwt\/03germany-floods-pgwt-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Floods Break Dams and Submerge Highways in Southern Germany\" title=\"Floods Break Dams and Submerge Highways in Southern Germany\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After a weekend of heavy rains, severe floods in regions of southern Germany led several towns to declare states of emergency and to evacuate their citizens from heavily affected areas. Water submerged streets and highways, broke dams and derailed a high-speed train. Even as rain let up on Monday, emergency crews rushed to fortify dams along rivers in anticipation of further flooding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Monday morning, a 43-year-old woman was found dead in her basement in the Neuburg-Schrobenhausen district in Bavaria, according to the local authorities. She had been missing since Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Several hours later, responders who were pumping water out of a basement in Schorndorf in Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg found the bodies of a man and a woman, according to the police. On Saturday, a firefighter died trying to save people, according to the district he served; another firefighter has been missing since Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Tens of thousands of emergency workers, both local and from other regions, are responding to the disaster, which affected Germany\u2019s two southern states, Bavaria and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. The responders, who include 800 soldiers, have rescued people stranded in their houses and cars, built emergency dams and set up crisis accommodations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, visited the small market town of Reichertshofen, roughly 35 miles north of Munich, on Monday and said that the flooding represented a new reality as the effects of climate change are being felt in Central Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWhat is also important to me is that we are very clear that this is not just an event that has been happening for centuries,\u201d he told reporters, noting that he had visited four active flooding sites this year alone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe must not neglect the task of halting man-made climate change,\u201d he told reporters on Monday. \u201cThis, too, is a lesson that we must learn from this event and this disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Between Friday at noon and Monday at noon, 120 to 160 liters of rain, or about 30 to 40 gallons, fell per square meter (about 11 square feet), which is more than usually falls in a month, according to Sebastian Altnau, a meteorologist with the German Weather Office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The firefighter who became the first victim of the floods had set out with three colleagues on a boat late on Saturday to save a family stranded inside a building. Before they reached the house, the boat flipped. While three of the firefighters were able to save themselves, the body of the fourth was found early Sunday, a spokeswoman for the district confirmed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the small southwestern town of Ebersbach in Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, the water pushed through a highway wall on Sunday night. A video published on the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0to5mqpa4MiJonPo3wbQXBFGTT54WjFGFgYEZcaBEAY6T7foKNpPJg8H1XjeDxnaVl&amp;id=100079581845548\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">city\u2019s Facebook feed<\/a> shows how the water turned the road into an impassable river in seconds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">About 15 miles to the northeast, near Schw\u00e4bisch Gm\u00fcnd, a sudden mudslide pushed a high-speed train off the rails and buried a car on Saturday night, according to the national rail service. Rescue workers were able to evacuate the train of its 185 passengers, and no one was hurt. After signaling with a flashlight, the driver, too, was picked up by rescue workers, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bild.de\/regional\/baden-wuerttemberg\/schwaebisch-gmuend-schlammlawine-verschluckt-auto-fahrer-ueberlebt-665c5e46dee8967a30123214\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">he told the German newspaper Bild<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In both Bavaria and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg over the weekend, several dams broke, in some cases leading to flooding of entire neighborhoods. On Saturday in Reichertshofen, where the chancellor visited Monday, two dams broke despite being fortified with sandbags, allowing the Baar River to flood neighborhoods. Around 5,000 emergency workers helped with rescue and evacuation operations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Responders spent much of Monday safeguarding against flooding from bigger rivers, which have swelled since the downpour. In the medieval city of Regensburg in Bavaria, in the southeast, emergency workers built a dam on Monday along the Danube River as it continued to rise. On Monday afternoon, the Danube\u2019s level measured at over six meters, or nearly 20 feet \u2014 twice as high as it was on Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The flooding has brought up memories of the disastrous <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/19\/world\/europe\/europe-floods-germany-belgium.html\" title=\"\">Ahr Valley floods<\/a> in 2021, which killed 189 people. The heavy rains, which scientists said were driven by <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/08\/23\/climate\/germany-floods-climate-change.html\" title=\"\">climate change<\/a>, led the Ahr River to rise sharply, sweeping up buildings, bridges and roads. At the time, the authorities were criticized for not warning the local populations properly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nancy Faeser, who, as Germany\u2019s interior minister, is responsible for disaster response, traveled with Mr. Scholz on Monday. She told local reporters that she could see \u201clessons had been learned\u201d in the Ahr catastrophe. \u201cCoordination and organization work much better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/03\/world\/europe\/germany-floods.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a weekend of heavy rains, severe floods in regions of southern Germany led several towns to declare states of emergency and to evacuate their citizens from heavily affected areas. Water submerged streets and highways, broke dams and derailed a high-speed train. Even as rain let up on Monday, emergency crews rushed to fortify dams [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/03\/multimedia\/03germany-floods-pgwt\/03germany-floods-pgwt-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4309,9634,25688,4791,22277,4799,58598],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64967,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64965\/revisions\/64967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}