Dinslaken
Storm softens Emscher dikes – railway bridge sags
The railway bridge has been washed away and sagged due to the rain of the last few days. photo
© Markus Gayek/TNN/dpa
The severe storms have dangerously softened the dikes on the Emscher in North Rhine-Westphalia. Now a railway bridge has slipped there. She threatens to fall into the river.
After the massive rainfall of the past few days, a railway bridge over the Emscher on the Lower Rhine has collapsed. “It is to be feared that the bridge will slide completely into the Emscher,” said a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Environment and Transport on Saturday. The Technical Relief Organization organized powerful pumps. If the bridge near Dinslaken collapses, this can prevent the bridge from damming up the water of the Emscher and causing flooding, said a spokesman for the Emschergenossenschaft.
On the lower reaches of the Emscher, there had already been major problems with flood protection after the violent storms on Friday. The dyke had eroded hundreds of meters, said the Ministry of the Environment. There is a residential area with about 100 houses nearby – in the meantime the question has been raised as to whether the residential area needs to be evacuated. Fire brigade, technical relief organization, police and numerous specialists were involved in a large-scale operation.
Passenger traffic not affected
The railway bridge, which has now collapsed, crosses the Emscher in the area affected by the flood. The single-lane branch line will only be used for freight traffic, said a railway spokesman. There is no impact on passenger traffic.
On Friday afternoon, the Emschergenossenschaft had actually cautiously given the all-clear. The level had dropped and the pressure on the dikes had decreased noticeably, the association reported. Nevertheless, the railway bridge sagged on one side on Friday evening. “We are now going through various scenarios on how to proceed,” said the spokesman for the Emscher Association.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Environment and Transport Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens) had already warned during a site visit on Friday that the stability of the railway bridge had to be checked. According to “WAZ”, he also made his first criticism in a statement on site. “What is happening here on the dyke should not have happened. This dyke should have withstood this flood,” said the minister, according to the report.
The Emscher in the northern Ruhr area was once the dirtiest industrial river in Germany and was used to dispose of wastewater from the Ruhr area. In recent years, the river has been renatured at great expense. A few hundred meters behind the point near Dinslaken, where the dikes have now been damaged, the Emscher flows into the Rhine.