![]() In the former German capital Bonn, water has spilled over onto the promenade along the left bank of the Rhine, which has been sealed off from public access. The council has also made around 40,000 sandbags available to residents threatened with inundation. A number of restaurants along the river said they may have to close if the waters continue to rise. Authorities have erected fortifications along the city's harbor to prevent any water from entering low-lying parts of the old town. The Rhine reached 7.79 meters in Düsseldorf, the state capital of North-Rhine Westphalia, on Sunday. Read more: After the thaw, Germany braces itself for flooding Read more: German cities ready themselves for climate change It is expected to climb to 9 meters on Monday, well above the normal water level of 3.5 meters in this part of the Rhineland.Ī spokeswoman for the flooding authority further south in Mainz said that the river had already burst its banks at several locations upstream and that water was still "rising intensely." The situation is expected to ease by Tuesday. Shipping traffic through the city of Cologne was halted on Sunday after the river breached the 8.3-meter (27-foot) mark. The Rhine in the country's southwest has witnessed a particular surge in recent days after the Eleanor weather pattern brought rainstorms to the entire continent. The water level in the Maas, as the Meuse is known in Dutch, reached its maximum forecast height in Maastricht on Thursday night but stayed below what authorities had termed the “doom scenario”, averting widespread flooding.Days of heavy rain and melting snow have caused water levels of the Rhine, Moselle and Danube rivers in Germany to rise, with authorities warning flooding is likely to continue through the weekend. While they have so far suffered no loss of life, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were also severely affected, with flash floods sweeping through the Swiss villages of Schleitheim and Beggingen, several towns in the Grand Duchy evacuated on Thursday, and thousands told to leave their homes in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht. Residents of some towns, including the resort of Spa, which has been under water since late on Wednesday, were being accommodated in tents. The army has been sent to four of the country’s 10 provinces to help with rescue operations and evacuations, along with teams of emergency workers dispatched from Italy and France. “There are a number of dikes on the Meuse where it is really touch and go whether they will collapse,” she said. ![]() Verlinden said water levels on the Meuse running into the Netherlands remained critical. Most of the dead were found around Liège, a city of 200,000 people, despite an order for residents of central districts and areas bordering the Meuse River to evacuate. While she said it was too soon to blame the floods and preceding heatwave on global heating, Nullis said the climate crisis was “increasing the frequency of extreme events while many single events have been shown to be made worse by global warming.”īelgium’s death toll has risen to 27, with another 20 still missing. “Some parts of western Europe …… received up to two months of rainfall in the space of two days,” World Meteorological Organization spokesperson Clare Nullis said. “Only if we decisively take up the fight against climate change will we be able to limit the extreme weather conditions we are now experiencing,” he said.Įxperts said such disasters were likely to happen more often due to climate change. Steinmeier called for greater efforts to combat global warming. ![]() The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said Germany “must prepare much better” in future, adding that “this is a consequence of climate change”. The German weather service DWD said it had passed on the warning to local authorities, who should have been responsible for organising any necessary evacuations. Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist, told Politico the disaster was “a monumental failure of the system”. Many people in the Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate remain unaccounted for, although efforts to contact them were being hindered by damage to phone networks.Įxperts said the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) issued an extreme flood warning earlier this week and questioned why the toll was so high. Officials warned the figures could rise further. ![]() One person died in Berchtesgadener Land, a spokeswoman for the Bavarian district told Agence France-Presse. The Ruhr river in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, before and after the flooding The Ruhr river in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, before and after the flooding.Īuthorities in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said that 110 people had died there, including at least 12 residents of an assisted living facility for people with disabilities, while neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia put the death toll at 43. ![]()
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