A church and cemetery after flooding in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany.Credit...Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via Shutterstock
THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Floods like these, which have left more than 100 dead, had not been seen in perhaps 1,000 years. For many, the warnings came too late, raising questions about lapses in Germany’s flood alert system.
BERLIN — Days before roiling waters tore through western Germany, a European weather agency issued an “extreme” flood warning after detailed models showed storms that threatened to send rivers surging to levels that a German meteorologist said on Friday had not been seen in 500 or even 1,000 years.
By Friday those predictions proved devastatingly accurate, with more than 100 people dead and 1,300 unaccounted for, as helicopter rescue crews plucked marooned residents from villages inundated sometimes within minutes, raising questions about lapses in Germany’s elaborate flood warning system.
Numerous areas, victims and officials said, were caught unprepared when normally placid brooks and streams turned into torrents that swept away cars, houses and bridges and everything else in their paths.
“It went so fast. You tried to do something, and it was already too late,” a resident of Schuld told Germany’s ARD public television, after the Ahr River swelled its banks, ripping apart tidy wood-framed houses and sending vehicles bobbing like bath toys.
Extreme downpours like the ones that occurred in Germany are one of the most visible signs that the climate is changing as a result of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that they are now happening more frequently for a simple reason: A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, generating more, and more powerful, rainfall.
» | Melissa Eddy, Jack Ewing, Megan Specia and Steven Erlanger | Published: Friday, July 16, 2021; Updated: Saturday, July 17, 2021
