Mr Rock, you are district administrator in the Rhein-Erft district, which has been particularly hard hit by the floods, and you have just come from the crisis team.

How is the situation?

Jonas Jansen

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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Fortunately, the water levels are falling.

The clean-up work in the flooded areas is running from Erftstadt up to Bedburg.

In Blessem, however, the situation is still tense.

Because the place has been evacuated and the edge is not coming to rest.

Blessem is a district of Erftstadt south of Cologne, where the flooding of a gravel pit caused several houses to slide down.

We have the big problem that water continues to enter the basin via the Erft.

We have to make sure that the influx stops.

A dam will be built on Monday with heavy equipment and building materials.

Otherwise the break-off edge is still unsafe.

It's all locked off.

You can feel that the residents - which you can understand - want to go back.

But there is still no electricity in town.

We are still a long way from a real return.

How do you imagine the process now: Will the infrastructure be restored first - such as bridges and roads?

How long will it take before places and houses are habitable again?

We have to build the dam to secure the local situation.

There are currently around 650 assistants and structural engineers who are checking which houses can be occupied in Blessem as soon as possible.

So that people get back a bit of normalcy.

Whereby we are guaranteed not to have normality for a long time.

We have floods and floods in the entire district.

Do you have an initial damage assessment?

No.

The people who have lost their belongings suffer the greatest damage.

The damage to the infrastructure cannot be measured, it is still too early for that.

That will be the task for the next few weeks.

The weather situation has divided Erftstadt into two parts.

We as a circle see what our district roads look like.

A few months will pass before the local infrastructure itself is built.

Now the water has to go everywhere.

The A61 is also undermined and blocked, this is the main axis between Holland and the south.

The colleagues on the federal motorway have to get to the traffic junction as soon as possible.

The A1 is also blocked in places.

How does your crisis team communicate with the municipalities, the state, the federal government?

Every city and every district has a crisis team.

In the event of a disaster, the district took over the organization.

We have around 35 experts from the offices and municipalities that are on the Erft in the crisis team.

We have two to four meetings a day to assess the situation.

The difficult thing is that we have many locations.

There is just not just blessem.

Despite all the technical possibilities, communication is sometimes difficult.

But that's how it is in a crisis, these are dynamic processes.

Most recently, 34 people were still missing.

The Bundeswehr and THW recovered vehicles on the B265, were there people in there?

In the lower elevation on Luxemburger Strasse, as it is called at the point, 61 vehicles were affected.

But miraculously nobody was injured there.

There were no deaths either.

But there is still an uncertainty situation due to a low-lying rainwater retention basin.

It could be that cars were still flooded there.

Citizens in the district should get "small emergency aid"?

What does that mean?

We have a database in which 1500 people offered their help.

We associate that with those who need help.

The solidarity of the people in the region is really enormous.

But we can't use loads of mineral water or winter sweaters right now.

People need donations.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Prime Minister Armin Laschet visited the weekend: What did they promise you?

The subject of promises is of course difficult in such situations.

You have promised us that you will do everything to ensure that help arrives.

Support is definitely there.

What do you hope for from the state and the federal government?

It would be nice if people could get help unbureaucratically, even without large applications.

So with residents who can prove that they are in need, which is not discussed for long.

And their misery is alleviated with payouts.

In the long term, the huge challenge will be the living space.

Where can the people go? That will keep us busy.

Has the crisis team already worked out how this could happen?

That the Erft is assuming a destructive power to this extent?

Not at all yet.

You cannot predict such a flood.

The district government has flood maps for every river.

Even the extreme case did not come close to what we experienced here.

I would never have imagined that the trickle of the Erft could one day get so big.

The problem was the heavy rain.

What does this mean for flood protection in the district in the future?

The Erft has areas where it can escape during floods.

But they weren't enough.

The lowlands are particularly affected.

There are situations when half a meter has decided whether you got wet or not.

The water is always looking for its way down.