Anatoli Neugebauer is standing just a hundred metres from his family home, at the edge of the Blessem district of Erftstadt, a commuter-belt town 12 miles (20km) south of Cologne. Even though flood waters from the Erft River had begun to recede by midday on Friday, he still had to wade through waist-high brown water just to get inside the stuccoed terrace house.
“It’s completely indescribable,” says Neugebauer, 40. “A catastrophe.”
“I was there twice yesterday trying to save what I could. But you open the door and the water’s to your chest and you just wonder, why am I even doing this? It’s all wrecked.”
Neugebauer was one of the 1,905 residents of the village evacuated on Thursday as the river began to overflow after record rainfall.
Familiar landscape turned into treacherous terrain: a gravel quarry south of Blessem, 40 hectares (99 acres) wide and 60 metres deep, rapidly filled with water, its edge expanding towards the town through headward erosion, swallowing up several cars, three half-timbered buildings and parts of a castle. » | Courtney Tenz in Erftstadt and Philip Oltermann in Berlin | Friday, July 16, 2021
