The processing of the Ahr Valley disaster in the investigative committee of the Mainz state parliament is agonizingly slow.
There are still no answers to fundamental questions.
Why did the state government act like flying blind that night?
Where were the responsible ministers?
Why didn't the state take responsibility as the law requires when the county is overwhelmed?
In the historical moment when it was up to them, the state government failed and dumped the responsibility on the district administrator.
If they had taken control of the situation, a lot would have been prevented.
Instead, warning press releases were sent, people went to bed early, and it is now pointed out that only information on "individual events" was available.
A "punctual extreme flood event" was assumed, an employee of the Ministry of the Interior now excused himself.
No reliable picture of the situation?
Interior Minister Roger Lewentz claimed that six collapsed houses in the municipality of Schuld did not provide a reliable picture of the situation.
But what's more resilient than reports of houses collapsing and people on rooftops trying to attract helicopters with flashlights?
Lewentz had all of this before him.
He himself was on the Ahr, in the eye of the storm.
What that means has apparently not become clear to him to this day.