In Altenahr, the rocks force the river to meander.

A steep mountain rises on the outskirts, around which the river splashes at normal times.

It moves in serpentine lines in a long loop through the once idyllic Langfigtal, only to flow in the opposite direction directly behind the rock.

Julian Staib

Political correspondent for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland based in Wiesbaden.

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During the flood disaster in July, however, the water crashed into the rock and took a shortcut through the tunnels.

It flooded the road tunnel up to the ceiling and the railway tunnels above - and dug a deep hole in the ground behind it.

The scenery is still dystopian: houses have been destroyed as well as a sewage treatment plant, streets are missing.

“The tunnel was full to the brim,” says Georg Wieber, geologist at the State Office for Geology and Mining in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Around him are members of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, employees of the state government and journalists.

Wieber is an expert on the state parliament's committee of inquiry into the flood disaster in the Ahr valley.

It will meet in public for the first time this Monday.

In the Ahr valley, the parliamentarians want to demonstrate their will to provide information.

The meeting is about the geological nature of the valley, it is part of the evidence.

This is called "inspection" in the language of the committees of inquiry.

To achieve this, the MPs work their way down the river bit by bit on this day.

Station in debt

In guilt, they get off the coach for the first time and stand on a large muddy surface.

There was once a tennis court here, and houses used to stand next to it.

This is where the meeting officially opens.

"I will then enter the agenda," says chairman Martin Haller (SPD).

The Ahr flows lazily behind him.

It is hard to imagine that this river tore away six houses in the village in mid-July and severely damaged many more.

A few days after the catastrophe, then Chancellor Angela Merkel came to visit Schuld, trudged through the mud and described the situation as "surreal" and "spooky";

the German language knows “hardly any words” to describe such devastation.

The devastation can still be seen in every place along the Ahr.

Bridges are still destroyed, some houses are in ruins, and there are no tracks.

At the same time, a lot has happened in the valley.

Most of the rubble has disappeared and the roads are passable again.

The state government regularly refers to these successes.

And just on the morning when the investigative committee and journalists are in debt, the responsible state economics and transport minister Daniela Schmitt (FDP) releases an emergency bypass around the place - which the entourage can take later.

You can move forward quickly, says Schmitt.

There are coincidences.

134 people were killed

The state government was sharply criticized after the flood. After all, the weather services had warned of a heavy rain event in the days before, but the authorities did not issue any warning on the day of the disaster. It took hours for the water masses to come from the top of the tributaries down to the mouth of the Ahr on the Rhine - and there, too, people died who were surprised by the water masses in their sleep. 134 people were killed on the night of July 15. More than 760 have been injured, many are still traumatized.

The question of why there was no warning is at the heart of the committee of inquiry. The MPs divided their work into three phases, and they provided the chronology of the flood: For phase one - the time up to the flood - the files have already arrived at the MPs. Phase two will then be decisive, the flood night.

The last phase should then be about crisis management.

It will depend less on the study of the files than on the questioning of witnesses and what the witnesses say about the night of the flood.

The focus is on the actions of the then District Administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU), who was responsible for disaster control.

On the part of the state government, Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) and the former state environment minister (and today's federal family minister) Anne Spiegel (Greens) have to justify themselves to the investigative committee.