Flood
Tense flood situation in Bavaria
Flooding in Regensburg at the Stone Bridge. Photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
Baden-Württemberg is recovering from the flood damage, while Bavaria is still struggling. Water levels remain high, particularly in the east along the Danube – despite initial slight declines.
Flooded streets, closed railway lines and searches for missing people – the flood situation in Bavaria remains tense despite initial signs of relief from some parts of the country. Especially in the east In Bavaria, water levels along the Danube remained high on Wednesday despite initial, slight declines. Baden-Württemberg, on the other hand, is slowly returning to normal – clean-up work has been underway here since Tuesday. In recent days, several places in southern Germany have seen more rain than occurs every 50 to 100 years.
Meteorologists do not see a new storm front approaching Germany, but there is no real all-clear for flooding either: In the south, there may be further heavy rain, as the German Weather Service (DWD) predicted on Wednesday. However, the heavy rain is over, said a DWD meteorologist.
Highest flood warning level in some areas along the Danube
In Regensburg in Upper Palatinate, residents had to evacuate around 30 houses on Tuesday evening because the ground was becoming increasingly soft due to the high groundwater. Further downstream in Passau in Lower Bavaria, the water levels on the Danube and Inn slowly fell – but still remained at a high level.
Even though the peak of the flood wave shifted further downstream towards Austria, all measuring stations along the Danube between Donauwörth in Swabia and Passau continued to report water levels in the area of warning level four – the highest flood warning level – on Wednesday.
In Meckenbeuren, Baden-Württemberg, not far from Lake Constance, clean-up work has been going on for a day and a half. Classes in a flooded school in the Kehlen district are due to start again on Thursday, said a community spokeswoman. Almost 30 million liters of water were pumped from a sports field. The water level in Lake Constance is slightly higher, but according to a spokesperson, it is hardly affecting passenger shipping.
In light of the flood disaster in southern Germany, climate activists say the federal government lacks ambition in the fight against global warming. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has now visited a flood area for the fourth time this year, Luisa Neubauer from the climate protection movement Fridays for Future told the German Press Agency in Berlin. “These visits are nothing more than symbolic politics with a bitter aftertaste, as long as Olaf Scholz forgets his marginal remarks on the climate crisis on the way home (…).”