Catastrophic flooding in Germany and Belgium
 

Man, oh man, terrible disaster. :o

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath...many-flooding/



https://youtu.be/5ApLZ1HNY3o

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...-storm-of-1982

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, and Skybird posted photos in the german politics thread.

^ overlooked that :o

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

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-hits-180.html

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07...6640352054.jpg

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07...6640352066.jpg

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07...6612227033.jpg

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?

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



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...work-cn99wjxzs


Paywall, sorry.

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:

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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/transla..._13512482.html

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.

^ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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