There is the woman from Sinzig, who lived 50 meters from the Ahr. Your grandparents built the house in 1947, saying: “The Ahr doesn’t come into the Jarden.” But she came, first into the garden, then into the house, 1.70 meters tall. “We are exhausted physically and mentally.” There is the woman of guilt who left her house only because the children asked her, and when she was safe she could see the water crushing the window panes. They have cleared out, cleared out the mud, but it is only now that she realizes what is missing, for example photo albums. There is the woman who worked in a retirement home in Altenburg that evening. Together with her colleagues, she brought 87 people upstairs, nobody died. When she says that, people clap at the memorial event in the spa park in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler.
A year has passed since the flood disaster. A year first.
In the night from July 14 to 15, 2021, it rained over parts of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, just as it had rained in the days before. The water levels in the streams rose, rivers burst their banks, and the Moselle, Erft and Ahr became rivers. Helicopters circled over the villages and rescued people with winches from the roofs of their houses.
184 people died during the night. Hundreds were injured, thousands traumatized.
This Thursday, the two countries want to commemorate the catastrophe, they want to look back, but above all forward. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was already in Altenahr at noon and had met the owner of a wine bar. His father drowned in the night, 83 years old, he not only rebuilt, he also planted 99 vines for the helpers. The vines still need to be supported, protected, but they are growing. In the evening, the Federal President continued to Euskirchen, where he commemorated the dead together with the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst (CDU). “It’s a day when the pain is almost unbearable again.” It will be years before the devastation is completely eliminated.
The column of the Federal President passed a destroyed hotel during their visit to the Ahr.
(Photo: Thomas Frey/dpa)
At the same time, in the spa park in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, a few meters away from the Ahr, a few meters away from houses that are covered with tarpaulins and surrounded by construction fences, not only those affected reminded of the flood disaster. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) came, Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) too.
134 dead, 9000 damaged or destroyed houses
In her speech, Dreyer said she could understand that people are not moving fast enough. Just a few weeks ago, 200 people affected demonstrated in Mainz because they were waiting for reconstruction aid, experts, craftsmen and materials. Dreyer said she is working hard to ensure that the reconstruction succeeds. Here in the Ahr Valley alone, 42,000 people are affected by the flood, and 9,000 houses are destroyed or damaged. 134 people have died. The responsibility now is to “review everything and draw conclusions to better deal with extreme weather events”.
only which one?
The political processing of the flood disaster is still in its infancy, especially in Rhineland-Palatinate. There, the Koblenz public prosecutor is investigating the former district administrator of the Ahrweiler district, Jürgen Pföhler (CDU), and another member of the crisis team. The suspicion: negligent homicide by omission. The two are said to have warned people too late. The disaster was only triggered and evacuated at around 11:09 p.m., when houses in the upper Ahr had already collapsed.
Now the district administrator may be a particularly blatant example of how a responsible person has failed. But the authorities, the systems, probably also failed. Even days before the flood, the warnings from the weather services were not taken seriously, and the warning chains did not work on the day itself. Sirens didn’t go off, helicopters weren’t ready for action, and in the Ahrweiler district, the operations center sat in a basement room with no cell phone reception. Civil protection will be changed and people are hoping for it to happen quickly.
A married couple is now speaking in the Kurpark in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, they had a bakery. The morning after the flood they had to throw away six kilos of food, all machines, but they had help from people they didn’t know, from a baker in Leipzig. And with this feeling of not having been alone, they want to continue.