storm
Endless rain in flood areas
The Elbe floods have flooded the construction site of the A14 bridge. The bridge is intended to connect the motorway junctions between Wittenberge in Brandenburg and Seehausen in Saxony-Anhalt. photo
© Stephan Schulz/dpa
The flood situation had actually stabilized. But the rain doesn’t stop. The water levels are rising again in some flood regions. Things could get worse.
It rains and rains, and the risk of dike breaches increases with every day. The continuous rain is expected to continue in parts of Germany until Saturday. The German Weather Service (DWD) originally issued its warnings until Thursday night. They were extended on Wednesday. This is likely to change the situation Flood areas are once again exacerbated. The effects of the rain were already measurable on Wednesday: some rivers had even more water. An overview:
Large areas of land were reported in Lower Saxony, the south of Saxony-Anhalt and the north of Thuringia. It is difficult to estimate how large the total flood area is. The authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia spoke of water levels rising sharply again due to the constant rain.
Now other federal states are also looking with concern at their rivers, which had recently been spared from flooding. In Hesse, the authorities expected water levels to rise in Fulda and Lahn and their tributaries. The responsible state office also expected water levels to rise on the larger rivers Rhine, Main and Neckar. In Saarland there were many fire brigade operations due to too much water.
100,000 helpers are deployed in Lower Saxony alone
Lower Saxony and Bremen have been struggling with flooding since before Christmas – the situation there is the worst. “We have a situation that has repeatedly been summarized in three words over the last few days: critical, but stable,” said Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD). He spoke of enormous masses of water. Water levels have risen again, especially in the catchment areas of the Hunte near Bremen and Hase in Emsland, according to the state agency for water management, coastal and nature conservation. Many gauges showed the highest reporting level, such as the Leine and Oker.
Lower Saxony is now also using reserves of sandbags from other federal states. With the exception of a small remainder, the company’s own reserve of around 1.9 million sandbags stored since the start of the flood situation before Christmas has now been used, said the responsible state agency for water management, coastal and nature conservation. The country has now received around 1.5 million more sandbags from other federal states.
Significantly more than 100,000 helpers are deployed across the country, said Prime Minister Weil. He appealed to companies to continue to release them from their actual work to deal with the flood situation. This appeal applies for the coming days and, if necessary, also for the next week.
How long will the dikes last?
The dikes, which are largely able to withstand the masses of water, prevented anything worse from happening. The question is, for how much longer? “So far we have not seen any dike breaches because the technical flood protection works well,” said Torsten Schlurmann, head of the Ludwig Franzius Institute for Hydraulic, Estuarine and Coastal Engineering at Leibniz University Hannover. “The dikes protect against flooding sufficiently well as long as water does not accumulate on them for a long period of time.”
The stability of a dike then depends on many different factors – for example, how large the gradient is between the pressure caused by the water level in the river and the land side of the dike, what material the dike is made of and what subsoil it stands on. An important task for the emergency services is therefore to constantly monitor the dikes, for example with dike walkers on the ground or with the help of drones from the air.
Scholz wants to get an idea of the situation
Several places along the Helme, which flows from Thuringia into the Kelbra dam, then through parts of the Mansfeld-Südharz district in the south of Saxony-Anhalt and then back to Thuringia, are also threatened by the water masses. Bundeswehr soldiers were requested. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had announced that he wanted to get an idea of the situation in Saxony-Anhalt. He was already in Lower Saxony. A resident in Kelbra describes the situation as somehow threatening.
Water levels also rose in the north – due to a storm surge in the Baltic Sea. However, there was no major damage as of Wednesday afternoon. In Great Britain, a driver died when a tree fell on his vehicle due to the storm. As a result, there were floods in the north of France, local power outages, evacuations and the interruption of the drinking water supply.
Expert: Flood events will probably occur more frequently in the future
As a result of the flood, experts are calling for a rethink when it comes to protecting against flooding. “As a result of climate change, where the flood processes will change, we will certainly see other types of floods in the future,” said Ralf Merz, hydrologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Halle (Saale), on Deutschlandfunk. “Such long flood events will certainly occur more often in the future.” A lot of damage could be avoided.
It is not yet possible to quantify how high the total damage will be. SPD budget politicians discussed suspending the debt brake again. “The floods are causing immense damage, especially in Lower Saxony,” said SPD member of the Bundestag Andreas Schwarz to the magazine “Spiegel”. “We could suspend the debt brake for these costs.”