Mr. Da Costa, you are a PhD student at the University of Reading in the UK, studying preparation for extreme weather events.

Now your parents in Luxembourg were affected by the flood themselves.

How did you experience that?

Sebastian Eder

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET.

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I live in the city of Luxembourg and around midnight I got a call from my sister: There is water in my parents' house and it keeps rising. I immediately set off with the car and found a road that was not yet flooded. When I got to my hometown, I was shocked at how much water was already in the house. It wasn't nearly as bad as in parts of Germany, but the people there had to try completely on their own to save their things from the water. There were no firefighters to be seen anywhere, or any other helpers. Fortunately, I had already explained to my parents beforehand how to behave in the event of a flood: that under no circumstances should you go into the water and that you have to switch off the electricity. Lots of people there didn't even knowLights were on everywhere in the neighboring houses, although there too the water was knee-deep on the lower floors. In Western Europe we are constantly doing fire drills, but nobody knows what to do in the event of such a flood - because people are not being prepared for it.

Have your parents been warned?

No. There have been fragments of information that have reached them, but as a scientist doing research in this area, I cannot call these warnings. There were no sirens wailing, there were no text messages to the population, none of that. The fire brigade said on the phone that night that they could only come if life was threatened. A little later she was no longer available. During the pandemic, people were told time and time again to stay at home, where they were safe. My mother told me that this feeling of security has now been taken away, that it feels like a burglar has ravaged her house. And in Germany the floods had far worse consequences. There, too, the crisis communication did not work in many places - it was foreseeable what would happen.

The European flood warning system Efas had issued a warning to German authorities four days before the storm. In the days that followed, the forecasts were constantly updated - and in the end, according to reports, read "like a macabre prophecy": The Rhineland is threatened by "extreme" floods, particularly on the Erft and Ahr rivers and in cities like Hagen and Altena . Hannah Cloke, professor at your university and co-developer of Efas, described it as a “monumental system failure” that these warnings did not reach people. Does Efas really work that well?

Yes. This is a system that observes river levels in Europe and can predict very precisely how they will develop. Last week, the responsible authorities in the affected regions were informed in good time. At this point the power of Efas ends. It is the same with many European authorities: they make recommendations and then each country or region can decide how to deal with them. The problem is, the real decisions are often made by people who are not trained enough to understand this information. So many people in Germany have lost their lives - and you can't even blame someone for it now because nobody is centrally responsible. That needs to change. It is very frustrating for us scientistswhen we issue warnings and they have no consequence.