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.