Flood in Rhineland-Palatinate: “Everything is broken, everything is gone!”

One night turned the lives of many people in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate upside down. The floods also caused devastation along the Ahr – and despair.

“Everything is broken, everything is gone, it’s a catastrophe,” says Marlene Wiechmann, fighting back tears. Shaking her head, the 76-year-old stands on a sloping street above the town center of Schuld in the Eifel, which has been destroyed by the masses of water. “There was once our tennis court, there was the house of Stanni, the Pole,” says the Rhineland-Palatinate woman. She points with her finger at points that are washed over by water and covered with mud, trees and rubble. Camera teams and photographers from home and abroad buzz around Marlene Wiechmann. The flood made the small village famous – and Marlene Wiechmann was deeply saddened.

Trees buckled like matches

Marlene Wiechmann and her husband Horst live in a house that is slightly raised. They too shoveled water and mud out of the cellar on the night from Wednesday to Thursday and had to watch that trees buckled like matches. When the couple went to bed exhausted, they would never have suspected that the Ahr had raged so badly only a few meters away. The raging river has torn away houses and collapsed bridges. So far, she has never been afraid of the water, says Marlene Wiechmann. That has now changed.

Erika Stollenwerk is now also afraid of the river. She lives a few kilometers from Schuld in the small village of Insul. The small town is popular with tourists, also because of its many beautiful half-timbered houses. When the floods came, Erika Stollenwerk was working in the kitchen of a hotel in the municipality – with a view of the Ahr. Excited guests asked if there was any need to worry about the rising water levels. “Nope!” She replied with full conviction. Ten minutes later, the hotel’s dining room was evacuated. “Sure, we’ve had floods from time to time, but this? Disaster! ”She says.

She spent the night of flooding on the second floor of the hotel – together with sixteen other people. She could no longer go home to her son Jan, although she actually only lives three minutes away on foot. The raging river had not only carried away houses near the bank, but also destroyed the stone bridge from the Middle Ages that connects the two districts of Insul on the left and right of the Ahr. The only reason that the small hotel still exists is that there is a beer garden between the building and the river bank.

“Emigrate, just go away”

Now Erika Stollenwerk is ankle-deep in the dirt, pushing mud out of her yard and at the same time finds it pretty pointless. “I’m done. Where do you put this sh … now? My car is broken and I can barely breathe. “Not because of exhaustion, but because there is an acrid smell in the air above the property. The masses of water have also destroyed the family’s oil tanks in the cellar.

What happens next, who pays for the damage, she doesn’t know. “Emigrate, just go away, leave everything where it is, would be good now,” says the woman from the island. There is only one thing she is happy about: that her husband does not currently live under the same roof with her and her son. This is a serious case of care, and has, among other things, an oxygen device that works with electricity. And the electricity was one of the first things that stopped working after the storm.

Fear for relatives

The cellular network and the Internet were also down. A fiber optic cable that was only laid about a year ago meanders through the Ahr like an eel not far from Insul. Again and again, children and grandchildren come to the flooded Eifel villages with panic on their faces to see if their parents and grandparents are doing well. There is no getting through by phone. There is great fear that the many missing people could become dead. And in far too many cases, unfortunately, also justified.

But there are also stories of miraculous rescues. In Insul, a man is said to have spent the night on a bridge pier surrounded by water after his house collapsed. Many residents report with glassy eyes that they had heard his calls for help all the time and could not help because they could not go outside. The man is said to have been rescued from the air by a helicopter after a long, cold night.

In 1910, says Marlene Wiechmann, there was already a flood of the century in her home village of Schuld. The stories about it would be passed on from generation to generation. The 76-year-old could have done without the fact that there would be a new edition in the summer of 2021. She hopes that her home village will shine in its old splendor again – with lots of half-timbered houses and beautiful gardens. But she can’t really believe in it at the moment.