Public broadcasting was not looking good on the night of the disaster.

From July 14 to 15, 2021, small rivers turned into torrents after heavy rain.

More than 180 people lost their lives on Erft and Ahr, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, 134 of them in the Ahr Valley.

As reporters, who claim to have a high level of competence, WDR and SWR were largely absent (let's not even talk about ZDF).

When the weather expert Karsten Schwanke at the SWR in Mainz suggested a special broadcast warning of the storm for the early evening of July 14, he was rejected.

Schwanke reported on this to the investigative committee of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament (FAZ on February 4).

He called the SWR in Mainz, the editors of "SWR Aktuell" and suggested a special program for 7:36 p.m.

He had never done anything like this before, at that time it was "definitely" foreseeable that there would be flooding in the Eifel.

"It's going to be bad in the Eifel," he said.

However, according to SWR, he cannot have meant it in such a way that one should have concluded that a warning in the program was necessary.

At least that's how it is presented by the broadcaster, who responded to our inquiry two weeks ago by succinctly saying that it was known that "not all processes worked smoothly and satisfactorily".

One has “itself an interest in learning from the experiences of the day” and “follows up all possible weak points”.

"No knowledge of the development of the tidal wave"

Now it sounds like nothing happened.

The SWR announced that the evening was recapitulated together with Schwanke.

Result: On the afternoon of July 14, 2021, he spoke to the news department of SWR in Rhineland-Palatinate about “a short live call of about 1 minute for just after 7:30 p.m., in addition to the weather forecast at 7:57 p.m. that was planned anyway.

A longer special was never discussed.”

Schwanke had "no knowledge of the development of a tidal wave of such magnitude".

The "predicted amounts of rain in northern Rhineland-Palatinate" were "a set part of the regular weather report as part of the news program at 7:57 p.m.".

The editors had planned the topic "continuous rain in the Eifel" as the focus of several programs.

"From the editorial assessment, with the common knowledge available at the time, there was no need for an additional live weather call."

Inquiry needs to dig deeper

Of course, “considering the specific issue together with Karsten Schwanke” does not change “the fact that the SWR self-critically classifies the entire process of reporting on the flood disaster, especially with a view to the first few hours, in such a way that not everything runs smoothly and satisfactorily in this phase is".

They are working "on optimizations" such as "faster internal reporting chains, coordinated workflows in the event of a disaster and better technical equipment for events where the infrastructure is impaired".

That sounds like a lot of what you hear about the disaster from the authorities and the state government: there were warnings, but there was a lack of classification.

The committee of inquiry will have to dig even deeper.

The fact that a weather expert made clear statements there and then had his statements put into perspective by SWR is – to put it mildly – ​​questionable.