The former district administrator of the Ahrweiler district, Jürgen Pföhler, was completely different than usual according to the descriptions of two close employees during the flood disaster. “I think everyone noticed that the district administrator was no longer himself,” said the then head of the vaccination center, Fabian Schneider, on Friday in the committee of inquiry into the flood disaster in the state parliament in Mainz.
Another close employee experienced Pföhler on the evening of the flood disaster on July 14, 2021 as “extremely personally affected” and “agitated” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/. “I didn’t recognize the man,” he said. Otherwise, Pföhler had “actually always made the right decisions” in all crises, such as Corona. The public prosecutor’s office is investigating against the district administrator because of warnings and evacuations that may have been too late. Pföhler is expected next Friday in the committee of inquiry.
Overloaded and overwhelmed: This is how three members of the crisis management team previously described how they felt on the evening of the flash flood on the Ahr. The members of the district’s technical operations management reported communication and capacity problems that would have significantly hampered the work of the crisis team during the disaster almost a year ago. It was hardly possible to find out anything about the respective situation from the fire brigades in the various locations because the connections had largely collapsed, said a volunteer from the Technical Relief Agency (THW), who was on duty in the operations center in the evening: ” I can’t run a situation if I don’t have feedback.”
More than 750 people were injured in the flash flood after extremely heavy rain on July 14th and 15th, 2021 in the Ahr valley and thousands of houses were destroyed. 134 people lost their lives. The committee of inquiry wants to find out how the catastrophe could have happened.