The storms with heavy flooding in Upper Franconia have just subsided – heavy rain is already threatening in Bavaria. From Wednesday evening and on Thursday night, it could rain very heavily, especially in the Allgäu and Swabia, occasionally in eastern Bavaria, said the meteorologist Guido Wolz from the German Weather Service (DWD) on Wednesday in Munich.
Then rain, showers and thunderstorms, which can be strong in some areas, shift to the south of Bavaria. Especially at the weekend, a lot of precipitation is to be expected in the Alps and in the Alpine foothills. There are also heavy gusts of wind. The northern franc is also a focus of risk.
According to the DWD, it is still unclear whether it will be as bad as in the Hof region. On Wednesday night, up to 88 liters of rain per square meter had fallen in municipalities such as Hof, Selbitz, Köditz or Naila. Cellars and streets were flooded, trees fell, and there were power outages. The disaster was in place in the Hof district until morning.
From Tuesday afternoon until late at night, around 650 missions that had to do with the storm were reported to the Hochfranken integrated control center. The fire brigades were busy pumping out until early in the morning, and streets were also flooded. Initially, however, nothing was known of the injured.
The helpers had worked all night, said a spokesman for the Hof fire department in the morning. Even now, the rescue workers in the entire region still have a lot to do. Some streets are still closed, said a spokeswoman for the Hof district office. The primary school in Selbitz and some daycare centers in Selbitz, Köditz and Naila will be closed on Wednesday. The fire department spokesman was surprised by the severity of the storm. He hadn’t seen it so extreme in years.
The fire brigade and police moved out to over 200 missions in the entire district, according to a message from the district office. More than 50 fire brigades with almost 1000 people as well as 140 members of the Technical Relief Organization (THW) were in constant use to pump water from cellars and to procure sandbags.
In the region, even the emergency number 112 could not be reached immediately due to the large number of callers in individual cases, as the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK) announced. The rescue service supply is guaranteed at all times. However, the fire brigade’s operations had to be prioritized, there were waiting times. Between around 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. alone, there were around 500 weather-related alarms.