The affected areas in southern Germany are in a state of emergency, the DW correspondent reports from Augsburg.
In southern Germany, in many parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the situation worsened overnight with floods causing rivers to overflow and dams to collapse.
In the Pfaffenhofen region, around 800 people were evacuated after a dam collapsed, authorities said, while hundreds of residents were told to move to the upper floors of their homes.
In the meantime, the city of Regensburg has been declared a state of emergency. According to the authorities, at least two people are missing, a resident and a volunteer firefighter.
DW’s Bavarian correspondent in the area around the city of Augsburg says that for most residents the extent of the flooding is a surprise.
In Diedorf, 30 kilometers north of Augsburg, an embankment and a dam were breached.
The floods appear to be subsiding for now. In the Fire Department, however, no one is talking about ending the state of alarm. Apparently because the weather service is warning of heavy rain in the next few hours as well.
Lessons from the floods of No
Philip Niggle, head of the small town’s volunteer firefighting team, tells DW: “Civil Protection’s Nina app worked, as did the disaster warning sirens. After the devastating floods in 2021 in the Ar valley with over 130 dead we upgraded our equipment to be better prepared. Today we have a truck that goes through deep water. That’s how we moved many residents to safe places.”
Those who left their homes and could not find shelter with relatives and friends spent the night in the facilities of the Diedorf sports center. In the city of Augsburg, the exhibition center was converted into a reception center with the capacity to accommodate 300 victims. Among others, Sabine Fischer and her elderly parents from the village of Külendal have found refuge in the indoor stadium.
She says that at 2 in the morning the river that passes near their house swelled and began to enter the basement of their house: “We could not imagine that we would have to face such a difficult situation. Smutter, the creek behind our house, is usually 70 to 80 centimeters wide. Due to the rains, however, it reached three and a half meters wide. It became a normal river that flooded everything.”
Editor: Stefanos Georgakopoulos
Source: Skai
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