Catastrophic flooding in Germany and Belgium

[Onkel Neal]

Man, oh man, terrible disaster. :o

In the hardest-hit parts of Germany, two months’ worth of rain fell in 24 hours, according to the Deutscher Wetterdienst, Germany’s meteorological agency. A map tweeted by the agency revealed that it was a 1-in-100-year deluge over a large swath of western Germany, or one that has just a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/16/weather-pattern-climate-germany-flooding/



https://youtu.be/5ApLZ1HNY3o

[Buddahaid]

I know the feeling and it is not good. 1982 Marin County, 2nd Valley, Inverness.

It seems so quaint now but it was an awful mess at the time. The farthest property up second valley had the barn and animals destroyed by a torrent of water and logs, the house was spared from that, but then a slide slammed into the kitchen severing the propane lines and the house then burned down.

Other houses were moved hundreds of yards and the National Guard was deployed to restrict access. Tetanus shots were required to pass the check points.

http://www.sparselysageandtimely.com/blog/?tag=great-storm-of-1982

[Catfish]

Yes lots of european countries experiencing flooding and destruction. In Germany in the Ahr region the flood came within 15 minutes in the middle of the night so not enough time to react. No current, no light, no telephone, gas lines ruptured. Usually summer is not the time where you have any such weather; a castle that has been sitting there for centuries has been partially destroyed.
Jim has some info here (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2757920&postcount=1), and Skybird posted photos in the german politics thread.

[Aktungbby]

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2758233&postcount=3554

[Catfish]

^ overlooked that :o

[Onkel Neal]

The cleanup effort is going to be massive. :cry:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9800707/Billion-euro-clean-begins-German-floods-Locals-begin-moving-debris-death-toll-hits-180.html

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/18/21/45595755-9800707-Devastation_Communities_in_Germany_have_started_th e_clean_up_ope-a-28_1626640352054.jpg

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/18/21/45595753-9800707-Police_officers_and_volunteers_clean_rubble_in_an_ area_affected_-a-29_1626640352066.jpg

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/18/13/45585451-9799491-image-a-24_1626612227033.jpg

[Skybird]

Its being reported that certain hotspots will be without electricity and water for months to come.

Some elder of the eldest say that even after bombardement in WWII things were not that bad in their villages.

Talk of of monumental system failure on the political level, because there were warnings from an European weather network monitoring events up to nine days ahead and correctly identifying most of the hotspots that later got hit. Political leaders decided to not take it serious and not to call the alarm.

I say it was fear to be the one responsible for hitting the red button. Shoot all weasels!:arrgh!: Where is Helmut Schmidt when you need him?

[Skybird]

British scientists: Germany had precise warnings, and nothing happened.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-knew-the-floods-were-coming-but-the-warnings-didnt-work-cn99wjxzs


Paywall, sorry.

[Reece]

Political leaders decided to not take it serious and not to call the alarm. They should all be sacked, even stand trial. :nope:

My heart goes out to all those effected by this disaster, how does one recover from something like this, especially with covid-19 lurking about??:hmmm:
So sad! :wah:

[Skybird]

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/monumentales-systemversagen-deutschland-war-praezise-gewarnt-die-menschen-aber-nicht/27433034.html

[Rockstar]

What can government do? In todayÂ’s Information Age people here pay attention to the local news and weather on tv, internet and radio to make their own decisions.

Though our state and local government screwed up once. When several years ago Elliott City, MD was severely damaged by flooding.

They moved quickly and did an excellent job rebuilding the city and businesses in record time, it looked new and shiny and modern. But failed to install any barriers to divert waters should it happen again. Guess what? Next year the the rains came and wiped everything out AGAIN.

This time they built the barriers before they rebuilt the city. But it was too late most businesses couldnÂ’t survive a second time.

[Onkel Neal]

This is going to take a massive volunteer effort, but I know Germany is up to the task.

Numerous locations in western Germany received 5 to 7 inches of rain, with locally higher amounts, between Tuesday and Thursday. Some of the most extreme downpours occurred Wednesday night into Thursday, when more than a half-foot of rain fell in less than 12 hours. Here are some select totals from western Germany:

Reifferscheid received 8.1 inches in just 9 hours, according to CNN.
Cologne received 6 inches in the 24 hours ending Thursday morning, according to CNN.
Lüdenscheid received 4.5 inches of rain in 24 hours, according to Deutscher Wetterdienst.
Düsseldorf received 1.89 inches in 12 hours Tuesday night into Wednesday, according to AccuWeather. Its three-day (between early Tuesday morning and early Thursday morning) total was 5.6 inches.
Heavy rain not only affected Germany but also Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France.

That's reminiscent of Hurricane Harvey which slammed us in 2018:

60.58 inches: The highest storm total rainfall, found in Nederland, northeast of Houston. Rainfall within a tenth of an inch of that total was recorded in Groves, a neighboring community.

All the rivers came out of their banks and flooded the whole region. My land that I was planning to build on at the time had 4 feet of water on it for 6 days. That's one reason I sold it last year and bought some land further inland, up by Dallas.

The high-pressure system over the Atlantic was flanked by an unusually intense zone of low pressure to the east over Central Europe that helped generate the downpours. The low was sandwiched between another area of high pressure over Eastern Europe, creating a weather system traffic jam that allowed heavy rain to persist. Computer models showed that the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, or a quantity known as total precipitable water, was comparable to those seen along the U.S. Gulf Coast during hurricane landfalls.

Before the torrents, Deutscher Wetterdienst had warned that weather models were predicting extreme amounts of precipitation in some areas.

The intensity of rain overwhelmed local rivers that flow into the Rhine River basin, and the volume of water overflowed several dams.

You guys basically had a tropical storm camp out on top of you. :timeout:



Talk of of monumental system failure on the political level, because there were warnings from an European weather network monitoring events up to nine days ahead and correctly identifying most of the hotspots that later got hit. Political leaders decided to not take it serious and not to call the alarm.


Honestly, if you live near a river or coastline, you shouldn't be waiting for the politicians to tell you what to do. The weather forecasters probably worked themselves into a frenzy, this should have been obvious.

[Jimbuna]

Merkel visited there today and promised all the help needed from the German government but I'm not sure if she'll still be in office to see what transpires.

[Skybird]

Embarassing. Clueless stammering like this will not help to easde the anger and even rage that grow amongst the flood victims. Like so often these days, German dminstration and pltlics was full of boatsign words - and failed when actions counted and words had ended.



https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/gestammel-ausfluechte-worthuelsen-wann-wurden-sie-gewarnt-diese-pressekonferenz-ist-die-bankrotterklaerung-der-regierung_id_13512482.html

[Commander Wallace]

Merkel visited there today and promised all the help needed from the German government but I'm not sure if she'll still be in office to see what transpires.




While Merkel may or may not be in office, one things is certain: Germany will of course rebuild the affected areas now that the flood waters have receded.

[Catfish]

^ Yes .. but one of the villages suffered the same four years ago, and instead of adding drain plains and overflooding canals, they only rebuilt it at the same place as before. "Lightning never strikes twice".. well it did and will.

[Onkel Neal]

That's too bad. If it happens once it will likely happen again. The people of that village made a bad call and now they're paying for it. Either put in the necessary infrastructure (expensive) or relocate, right? If the local govt is not responding to your needs, sell and relocate.

[Skybird]

Neal, the information that it would become that worse as was the case, did not make the round, it was passed to the top of the administrative level - and from there it was not passed down. People in certain regions knew that this dam and that thing of local anti-flood infrastructure was found to be in bad shape last autumn - and the administrators on regional and state level failed to repair it (debts, debts, debts are ruling everywhere), did nothing, ignored it and hoped for the best. The weather forecast mentioned heavy rain, yes - but nothing that was of the likes that it puts you on instant alarm to evacuate. The next morning, i was surpised. Catfish posted in the Germany thread he was surprised by the scale of things, too. Everybody was surprised.

You can only react in time if you have a chance to directly anticipate that the hammer is falling down at your location.

Whats more, over here weather apps and forecasts are CONSTANTlY nanny-warning of the sky falling. If a drop of rain may ruin the sunshine, you already get - for reasons of insurrance laws, I assume - a warning declaring it a possible severe "Unwetter". The mildest of bad weathers already becomes a threat to life and community. Its that bad that i have deactivated all such alarms in my weather app, because 99 out of a 100 times they are overblown and completely pointless.

I tell you what is more likely to have happened. The warning by that international flood-monitoring centre was handed to the German top leaderships levels. And nobody dared to ring the alarm bell, because that costs time, effort, money, work, it causes a whole rat tail of consequences, and it was more comfortable to just assume that after the many false weather alarms by the weather frogs this was just another one of that. The outlook to just ignore it and laugh about it the next day is tempting, and so it was done: one did nothing. No costs. No overwork hours. Nobody needing to accept liability for have pushed the red button.

And so...

These heavy rains happen extremely fast, and quickly. In Münster we have had in 2014 an event that drowned two thirds of the city: within less than 2 hours more than 280 l of rain fell down. And the water came not from a flood wave, but heavy rain, and these events, the rain component in it, are extremely difficult to pinpoint and predict. The flood warning they now talk of comes from expected high water levels in a general heavy weatherzone, say a federal state or two, and the water then making its way along the topographic characteristics of the landscape - that you can forsee days ahead, yes. But not extreme heavy rains like these, they form within minutes, may be over after one or two hours, and cover an area maybe just 3x5 km, or even smaller. And that is sufficient already to spread desaster beyond that zone. I live in the Northeast of the city, my parents in the southwest, in straight line around 7.5 km away. While Münster in the centre and my part of town was almost drowning, in their part of thew city it stayed almost dry, and they had mild rainfalls only!

These kind of rains are a very different phenomenon than a Hurricane. I mean how they are being caused. You can know when a Hurricane is coming. With European heavy rains , which have intensified by a factor of 5 or so over the past decade, this is not possible. You may know there is a general threat across the centre or the West of Europe, but where the hammer falls precisely is almost impossible to predict more than an hour or two ahead. And if then the sirens do not work, and it is in the middle of the night and people are in bed...

In some villages, police and fire brigades drove around in the streets and alarmed the population via microphgone cars. Prewarning time this way before the flood wave arrives: 5-10 minutes.


So, I must defend the ordinary people here, they could not have known in advance that thigns would ebcome that bad, and move out. The failure lies higher up in the hierarchy.

Terrible it is for those who have already had ruined businesses or difficult businesses due to two or three Corona lockdowns. There are not few who simply do not have any reserve and credits left to restart once again, with now EVERYTHING being in ruins.Or the ver yold ones, those who are too old to rebuild financial reserves once again. Then those who have lost businesses who had been in hands of their fmailies since they cna rememeber, and where the yhave grown up in sinc ehcildhood on. Others who have lost the qhole image of the alndsacapoe they hapepned to have grown up in. Its a lie that evertyhign will be rebuild. some things and local regions and villages there are that cannot be rebuild, that simple.

[AVGWarhawk]

The conversation and news about this event echo hurricane Katrina 2005. The warnings came. People ignored. The infrastructure for New Orleans was in need of repair. The money allocated for said repairs went to building new casinos. The finger pointing. The climate change debate soon to come. It will be months to clean up and years to get back to what once was. Sorry this happened to these folks.

[Skybird]

The Deutsche Wetterdienst DWD warns of new severe rainfalls on the weekend in the already hit desaster regions in the Eiffel. :o

[Onkel Neal]

Neal, the information that it would become that worse as was the case, did not make the round, it was passed to the top of the administrative level - and from there it was not passed down. People in certain regions knew that this dam and that thing of local anti-flood infrastructure was found to be in bad shape last autumn - and the administrators on regional and state level failed to repair it (debts, debts, debts are ruling everywhere), did nothing, ignored it and hoped for the best. The weather forecast mentioned heavy rain, yes - but nothing that was of the likes that it puts you on instant alarm to evacuate. The next morning, i was surpised. Catfish posted in the Germany thread he was surprised by the scale of things, too. Everybody was surprised.

You can only react in time if you have a chance to directly anticipate that the hammer is falling down at your location.

Whats more, over here weather apps and forecasts are CONSTANTlY nanny-warning of the sky falling. If a drop of rain may ruin the sunshine, you already get - for reasons of insurrance laws, I assume - a warning declaring it a possible severe "Unwetter". The mildest of bad weathers already becomes a threat to life and community. Its that bad that i have deactivated all such alarms in my weather app, because 99 out of a 100 times they are overblown and completely pointless.

I tell you what is more likely to have happened. The warning by that international flood-monitoring centre was handed to the German top leaderships levels. And nobody dared to ring the alarm bell, because that costs time, effort, money, work, it causes a whole rat tail of consequences, and it was more comfortable to just assume that after the many false weather alarms by the weather frogs this was just another one of that. The outlook to just ignore it and laugh about it the next day is tempting, and so it was done: one did nothing. No costs. No overwork hours. Nobody needing to accept liability for have pushed the red button.

And so...

These heavy rains happen extremely fast, and quickly. In Münster we have had in 2014 an event that drowned two thirds of the city: within less than 2 hours more than 280 l of rain fell down. And the water came not from a flood wave, but heavy rain, and these events, the rain component in it, are extremely difficult to pinpoint and predict. The flood warning they now talk of comes from expected high water levels in a general heavy weatherzone, say a federal state or two, and the water then making its way along the topographic characteristics of the landscape - that you can forsee days ahead, yes. But not extreme heavy rains like these, they form within minutes, may be over after one or two hours, and cover an area maybe just 3x5 km, or even smaller. And that is sufficient already to spread desaster beyond that zone. I live in the Northeast of the city, my parents in the southwest, in straight line around 7.5 km away. While Münster in the centre and my part of town was almost drowning, in their part of thew city it stayed almost dry, and they had mild rainfalls only!

These kind of rains are a very different phenomenon than a Hurricane. I mean how they are being caused. You can know when a Hurricane is coming. With European heavy rains , which have intensified by a factor of 5 or so over the past decade, this is not possible. You may know there is a general threat across the centre or the West of Europe, but where the hammer falls precisely is almost impossible to predict more than an hour or two ahead. And if then the sirens do not work, and it is in the middle of the night and people are in bed...

In some villages, police and fire brigades drove around in the streets and alarmed the population via microphgone cars. Prewarning time this way before the flood wave arrives: 5-10 minutes.


So, I must defend the ordinary people here, they could not have known in advance that thigns would ebcome that bad, and move out. The failure lies higher up in the hierarchy.

Terrible it is for those who have already had ruined businesses or difficult businesses due to two or three Corona lockdowns. There are not few who simply do not have any reserve and credits left to restart once again, with now EVERYTHING being in ruins.Or the ver yold ones, those who are too old to rebuild financial reserves once again. Then those who have lost businesses who had been in hands of their fmailies since they cna rememeber, and where the yhave grown up in sinc ehcildhood on. Others who have lost the qhole image of the alndsacapoe they hapepned to have grown up in. Its a lie that evertyhign will be rebuild. some things and local regions and villages there are that cannot be rebuild, that simple.



I know, I know. I'm telling you, I live in an area like that. These kind of weather condition are usually forecast days before they occur. Sometimes the meteorologists don't get it precisely right but in general, they give ample warning. Yes, we can see when a hurricane forms, how it strengthens, and where it is likely to go. They can also detect fronts, depressions, and rainfall amounts. Do you have any records of the forecast in the days leading up to these rains? I mean, if one went to bed after the weatherman said "all sunny in the region tomorrow" and woke up to a flood, yeah, I guess that would be a problem. But that's not what happened.

The first precise warning that Germany was about to be hit by a violent storm likely to unleash a potentially deadly flood reached the country’s Meteorological Service in the early hours of July 12, nearly three days before disaster struck.

It was Monday morning, and this government agency’s supercomputer, a machine the size of a hockey rink, had just generated a model forecast predicting with over 90% certainty and a precision down to 2 square kilometers that a string of West German communities would likely be befallen by severe flooding by late Wednesday.

The alarming forecast, which soon proved to be accurate, was picked up by the agency’s on-duty meteorologist who promptly triggered the country’s sophisticated flood alert system at 6 a.m., notifying at once the government, the emergency services, the police and key media about the looming catastrophe.

Some local authorities heeded the warning and alerted their populations, potentially saving lives, but many others failed to do so before the flash floods hit Germany last Wednesday, killing over 160 and seriously injuring nearly 1000 people. Officials say those numbers could increase as rescuers keep combing through destroyed homes.

In those places, an overreliance on digital tools such as warning apps meant to replace old-school sirens and public service announcements, the reluctance to order evacuations, and simply incredulity about the imminence of such a disaster were among the factors that stood in the way of a pre-emptive response, experts and officials said.

Some experts said that the situation resembled that of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when some governments were late to take adequate action to ward off a calamity no one had ever witnessed before.


The warning was then broadcast on public service television, with newscasters announcing that some of the areas that later became flooded would see 200 liters of rain per square meter—an exceedingly rare amount that was certain to cause severe flooding.

Armin Schuster, head of the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, said that Germany had a uniquely good alert system that worked impeccably. Over 150 alerts were issued in the run-up to the flood, 16 of them indicating lethal danger, he said.



https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-opposition-politicians-blame-government-for-ignoring-flood-warnings-11626694101


Again, let me remind you, I have been in this situation for all my life. I don't need anyone to tell me I live in an area that floods, or might see a hurricane. People are aware they are living in an area that has hazards. :-?

Every time there's a disaster, people want to blame it on the govt. People who live in nice river-front homes, in low areas, or on the beach know they are at more risk. They need to take responsibility for their own lives.

[AVGWarhawk]

Every time there's a disaster, people want to blame it on the govt. People who live in nice river-front homes, in low areas, or on the beach know they are at more risk. They need to take responsibility for their own lives.

Very true.

[Aktungbby]

I know, I know. I'm telling you, I live in an area like that. These kind of weather condition are usually forecast days before they occur. Sometimes the meteorologists don't get it precisely right but in general, they give ample warning. Yes, we can see when a hurricane forms, how it strengthens, and where it is likely to go. They can also detect fronts, depressions, and rainfall amounts. Do you have any records of the forecast in the days leading up to these rains? I mean, if one went to bed after the weatherman said "all sunny in the region tomorrow" and woke up to a flood, yeah, I guess that would be a problem. But that's not what happened.This is ironically an old problem for Germany:D They never do get the weather quite right!:O: Had the mission not gone on June 6, the next window would have been a full two weeks later, when tides and moonlight were right. On that day two weeks later, a completely un-forecast gale would have caused the invasion to fail.
Ross said that had the invasion failed, the secrecy about when and where the Allies would land would be lost, victory in Europe would have been delayed for a year, and the Soviet Union might have taken control of the continent.
Years later, during their ride to the Capitol for his inauguration, President-elect John F. Kennedy asked President Eisenhower why the Normandy invasion had been so successful.
Ike's answer: "Because we had better meteorologists than the Germans!"https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/08d7173c270a956c5aba53b98f4ed0d4a4b1a060/c=17-57-1613-2207/local/-/media/USATODAY/USATODAY/2014/06/03//1401823825000-Stagg.jpg?width=300&height=405&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp< Eisenhower's chief meteorologist, Group Capt. James Martin Stagg, made one of the most important weather forecasts of all time. Defying his colleagues, he advised Ike to postpone the invasion of Normandy by one day from June 5, 1944, to June 6, because of uncertain weather conditions. Believing his own meteorologists, Rommel, who had previously dubbed the impending Normandy invasion of his Western Wall: 'The Longest Day' , had gone home to celebrate his wife's birthday...:oops:https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/06/03/d-day-weather-forecast/9914207/

[Skybird]

No comment.



https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/cell-broadcast-deutschlands-buerokratische-verhoehnung-des-21-jahrhunderts-kolumne-a-6fd98f51-201e-4d43-897a-feed75b18f65

[Catfish]

Sascha Lobo knows all and always, but always a bit too late :03:

Yes a cell broadcast would be a good idea, especially when the analog public warning devices are in such good order as in Germany lol

[Skybird]

In some flood regions, the public prosecutor's office is now investigating administrative officials at the municipal level, on suspicion of failure to provide assistance, and over the lack of warnings handed out to the population.


Edit: from the FAZ:
The public prosecutor announced that there was an initial suspicion of negligent homicide and bodily harm through failure against the district of Ahrweiler. There are indications that the residents were warned too late about the floods.