The situation has eased somewhat in the south of the Netherlands.

The province of Limburg breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday after the dykes and bank reinforcements withstood the pressure of the floods during the night.

The Venlo region reported that the water level of the Meuse was falling.

"Raising the dykes and bank reinforcements largely worked and ensured that there was not much disaster," said Antoin Scholten, the mayor of Venlos and chairman of the Limburg-Nord security region.

Volunteers as well as armed forces reinforced the banks with sandbags.

The military should stay until at least Monday noon.

In Venlo, among other things, a hospital with 200 patients had been evacuated as a precaution.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in business.

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Further south in Roermond, where the Rur flows into the Meuse, residents of evacuated districts were allowed to return home.

In Valkenburg on the Meuse tributary Geul, all residents are supplied with electricity again.

The television showed a restaurant owner and a shopkeeper trying to save soiled goods - and volunteers cleaning pews that were brought outside in front of the Church of St. Nicholas and St. Barbara.

The community of Echt-Susteren threatened sightseers with a fine.

It issued an emergency ordinance for the area between the Meuse and the nearby Julianakanal.

“Are you not a resident or a helper?

Then stay away! ", She announced on the Internet.

Netherlands better protected from floods

The train service between Maastricht and Liège remains interrupted after the line at Eijsden was temporarily fully flooded. The fact that property damage remains largely in the Netherlands has to do with several factors, including the topography: In Germany and Belgium there are more mountainous areas where rainwater flows en masse into the valleys, the newspaper de Volkskrant quotes Jos Teeuwen, board member the Limburg water authority, the administrative body that takes care of dikes and everything else to do with water. After major floods in the 1990s, the Netherlands also widened the river banks in many places in order to be able to absorb floods.

In Belgium, according to the authorities, at least 27 people were killed because of the flood, more than a hundred were missing on Sunday. Around 120 communities suffered severe damage. The province of Liège is particularly affected, where the Meuse is fed by many tributaries. In the Angleur district of the provincial capital, the Ourthe flooded houses and tore cars away. In the hard-hit town of Pepinster and elsewhere, helpers were still looking for victims in the rubble, as the newspaper De Tijd reported online. The falling level of the Meuse brings relative relaxation. Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo declared Tuesday a national day of mourning.