[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.