Nobody can stop a flood.
But whether the flood should have had these consequences must be asked.
Sometimes the state cannot do much more than warn and educate.
But he is also obliged to do so;
failure to do so can cost lives.
Therefore the question now arises: Did the authorities know of a foreseeable extreme flood in certain places?
Did they warn in good time and how did they ensure that the affected citizens were reached?
We still have to save, help and heal. But the responsibility not only for climate change, but also specifically for protecting people, is not just something that victims want to be clarified.
This question is socially and nationally significant because the next catastrophe could soon be imminent.
And then nobody should be surprised in their sleep by a flood that they might have been warned about.
Indeed, the role of protecting the population, for which (nuclear) bunkers were built during the Cold War, but which was later criminally neglected, has to be comprehensively dealt with.
The siren test alarm every Saturday is still remembered by many.
But citizens not only have to be reached, they have to know what to do - not only in the event of a flood, but also in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical disaster.
A natural disaster should wake up the federal state
So it is not about the desperate search for scapegoats, but about the clarification of responsibilities and the review of the structures of the basically functioning federal state - which is however in a deep slumber in some areas, for example in digitization or in approval procedures.
A natural disaster was supposed to wake him up, but that's not certain.
Because the old dream that nothing could happen to us and we don't have to worry lives on.
Social resilience does not arise in the sleeping car, but through free citizens who tackle it themselves, as can now be seen again, but who also remind the state of its tasks.