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It’s Floodin’ Down in Bayern
My perusal of U.S. media is incomplete, as always, but it seems likely that you have not heard that most of Southwest Germany is currently experiencing massive flooding. This began about two weeks ago with flooding in Saarland. No sooner had we begun to relax after that round of natural disaster, than we got a week’s worth of mostly rainy weather that’s culminated now in about 80 hours worth of heavy rains. This deluge has caused dams to break along the Danube, Isar, Paar, Schmutter, and other local rivers and streams. Ulm, Augsburg, Munich, and Nördlingen are among the major cities dealing with the consequences.
Markus Söder, State President of Bavaria, has declared a state of emergency. Around 40,000 first responders have been in action since Friday night. To date, 3,000 have been evacuated; there are two reported fatalities, both firefighters who were attempting to rescue stranded people.
Locally, some small villages and towns have been wholly or partly evacuated: Anhausen, Aichach, Allershausen, and Friedberg among them. Diedorf, where we usually do our shopping, was completely cut off from road traffic east/west until late this afternoon. We (Vrouwe and I and our neighbors) spent 3 hours yesterday evening and 1 today bailing water out of the basement of the older part of our Christian community house, Koinonia.
So, to those who pray: please pray that the rains stop, and that we continue to have the strength and capabilities to deal with the flooding.
If you are interested in seeing some of the pictures from the national press (hilft, wenn man Deutsch liest), here is the link to Der Spiegel.
For the local press coverage, here is the link to the Augsburger Allgemeine.
Published in General
Praying, HvA.
I guess I’ve been distracted by doings in Ukraine and Gaza. I’m still wrapping my head around the pier that we blew $320 million on to resupply Hamas seems to have sunk by … ahem … Divine intervention.
Thank you. So sad. I lived in Germany for 5 years and loved Bavaria.
Sounds like the first responders are doing first-rate work, good on them. Segen für Bayern und andere.
It’s really strange that a disaster of that magnitude isn’t on the news here.
The US has not had international news reporters for decades. Cost cutting.
If Big Pharma or Bill Gates had any financial interest in floods in Germany or Great Britain, the situation would be different. Network station owners have to keep those two top investment sources happy.
Seems like just last year that the Rhone was too low for barge traffic. I am disappointed in German engineering, if their dams are failing.
Part of the problem is that when first a major drought hits a region, it causes the soil to act as an impermeable cement-like substance. So then when it finally does rain, the rain simply slides off the non-absorbent soil into creeks and riverlets, and these waterways carry much more rain than normal since so little of it got into the soil.
The engineers who design dams never considered how there might be such vast changes in water absorption. So then they never considered that the dams would experience such heavy duty run off.
Danke!
Yeah, I thought so, too. It looks like the “TrUmP is a ConVicteD FeLoN!!” nonsense is sucking up all the oxygen in the newsrooms.
I was stunned to see the flooding in front of the Heidelberg castle. Been there.
And other towns
In addition to hurting the locals, the riverboat cruise industry, booked passengers, and companies that insure cruisers will take a hit. The impact goes beyond the blocks nearest the rivers.
I just saw the video on weather channel on line – have not seen the news here covering it – Texas has been bombarded with terrible weather too –
Yeah, the North Texas Troublemakers group on FB have been talking about that. How is it where you are?