Status: 07/28/2021 1:03 p.m.
After the flood disaster, 73 people are still missing in Rhineland-Palatinate, at least 133 have lost their lives there. There are no longer any missing persons in North Rhine-Westphalia, 47 people died there.
Almost two weeks after the flood disaster, the whereabouts of some people are still uncertain. At least 179 people lost their lives in the floods in Rhineland-Palatinate, where 73 people are still missing. In the affected areas of North Rhine-Westphalia no more people are missing, said Interior Minister Herbert Reul. There are 47 fatalities to mourn.
Between hope and powerlessness
The Catholic emergency chaplain Zenon Szelest describes the emotional state of relatives, who almost two weeks after the devastating rain, have no certainty about what happened to their loved ones, in two words: hope and powerlessness. It would only give them certainty, say the experts.
“First of all, the relatives try to get active,” says the deacon from Cologne. For example, they would go out and speak to the emergency services, neighbors and passers-by about the missing person. “Then comes the great helplessness.” In Ahrweiler, Schleiden and other places, the water carried everything away. “There’s not much you can do about that. The only thing left is the idea that the missing people are still alive.”
Identification of the dead difficult
There is currently a lot of information exchange and hope in the flood areas, observes Szelest. Over time, however, there would be less and less news, statements from respondents contradict each other. “Then of course it will be very bad.” It is all the more important that the bodies are identified. Only when the relatives are certain can the processing begin. “The hope that people are alive blocks mourning,” says the clergyman.
The identification of the dead is difficult, however. Fingerprints, tooth samples or DNA smears would have to be compared with comparative material from the deceased, said the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) ARD. “However, if many of the houses in which these people lived have been torn away, it is a very laborious process.”
No more missing in North Rhine-Westphalia
The situation is different in North Rhine-Westphalia, where people are no longer missing. Interior Minister Herbert Reul said that in the state parliament interior committee. There are 47 fatalities to mourn. According to previous knowledge, 23 people were probably hit by the water masses on the street and torn to their death, as Reul reported. Four dead are firefighters.
Reul emphasized that it was the biggest natural disaster that NRW had ever suffered. Experts assumed “at least” a storm of a century. Up to 23,000 workers from the fire brigade, aid organizations, technical aid organization and crisis teams were in action. Reconstruction could even take years in some places.
Property damage “runs into the billions”
The property damage – private as well as public – go “in the billions”. The supply of drinking water, electricity, gas and the telecommunications networks were also badly affected and still did not work in parts of the crisis regions. According to Reul, around 100,000 people in the affected areas in North Rhine-Westphalia were initially without electricity. According to the latest information, this number has fallen to around 5000 people. Despite all the progress, the gas supply has not yet been restored selectively. On the subject of telecommunications, it was said that around 20,000 mobile phone connections and around 11,000 landline connections from Vodafone and around 40,000 customer connections from Telekom have failed to date.