Concern still reigns in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, a German town devastated last July by floods.

With 18,000 affected inhabitants, more than half of the population, the town renowned for its thermal baths paid a heavy price for the deadly bad weather which hit part of western Germany on the night of July 14 to 15. 2021. The commemoration of the tragedy will be marked on Thursday by the on-site visit of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Mayor Guido Orthen will be able to present streets cleaned of mountains of sediment and debris carried by the waves that drowned his municipality.

But the return to normal “will still take time”, he explains to the press from his city, which looks like an open-air construction site.

“We still have temporary infrastructure, temporary kindergartens, temporary schools, temporary roads so that life is possible”, explains the elected official.

“A situation as dangerous as a year ago”

None of the 18 bridges spanning the Ahr are usable.

Three footbridges replace them temporarily.

The scars of the floods are visible everywhere, on the collapsed shoulders of the roads or the walls marked by the rising waters.

If officials want to move quickly to rebuild, they also have the pressure to protect the population from future floods.

For the moment, "we live in a situation as dangerous as a year ago", assures Guido Orthen, believing that this creates significant stress, especially when bad weather is announced.

The disaster claimed the lives of 185 people in Germany, including 134 in the Ahr valley alone, which winds forty kilometers, not far from Bonn.

Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler knows that extreme weather events are set to increase due to global warming.

The mayor regrets that protection against the risk of flooding is the subject of endless discussions between the administrative levels which pass the buck.

In areas classified as highly flood-prone, houses destroyed last year are not allowed to be rebuilt but simply damaged ones can be repaired, he explains.

A ludicrous situation.

A "feeling of helplessness"

On the offices of the administrations, it is the traffic jam: Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler must file 1,400 requests for aid for reconstruction projects by next summer.

"We won't get there", warns Guido Orthen, whose municipal teams, even reinforced, are "at the end of their strength".

After a year of living "in a state of emergency", the chosen one sees growing "disenchantment" and "feeling of helplessness".

Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler has lost more than 2,000 inhabitants since the tragedy.

In Rhineland-Palatinate, 500 million euros in aid have been paid out of the 15 billion planned, "an affront to the victims", according to Conservative MP Horst Gies, quoted in the daily General Anzeiger.

In the neighboring region of North Rhine-Westphalia, 1.6 billion euros of works have been approved out of an envelope of 12.3 billion.

15 kilometers from Ahrweiler, in front of the ruined facade of the former home for the mentally handicapped in Sinzig, candles remind us that 12 residents were drowned by the flood.

The association that managed the structure is still looking for land to build a new place of accommodation.

“Our contacts with the town hall and the administration have not yet yielded anything,” laments Ulrich van Bebber, head of the “Lebenshilfe” association (help for life).

Among those who try to find a livable daily life, anger rises with the feeling of not being treated with dignity, of seeing aid arrive too slowly.

“We want to exist in the eyes of Germany (…) we have the impression that everything else in the world is more important than what is happening here in Germany”, laments Iris Münn-Buschow in her house whose ground floor floor is still under construction.

With her husband, she founded an association, “the Ahr valley rises” (“das Ahrtal steht auf”), which organized several demonstrations.

“No one has forgotten the Ahr valley and the other regions,” the president of the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate Malu Dreyer recently assured the inhabitants, underlining the extent of the reconstruction to be carried out.

World

Germany: Nine Women Victims of 'Drape Drugs' at Social Democratic Party Party

Two children wanted in Germany found in Menton with their armed father

  • Germany

  • Flood

  • Severe weather

  • Olaf Scholz

  • World