Floods like these, which have left more than 100 dead, had not been seen in
perhaps a 1,000 years. For many, the warnings came too late, raising questions
about lapses in Germany’s flood alert system.
A church and cemetery after flooding in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler,
Germany. Credit...Friedemann
Vogel/EPA, via Shutterstock
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.
But even as extreme weather events become increasingly common around the
globe — whether wildfires in the American West, or more intense
hurricanesin the Caribbean —
the floods that cut a wide path of destruction through Germany, Belgium,
Switzerland and the Netherlands this week were virtually unheard-of,
according to meteorologists and German officials.
Even so, they were not unforeseen.
People passing along sandbags in Erftstadt,
Germany. Credit...Thilo
Schmuelgen/Reuters
“There should not have been so many deaths from this event,” said Dr.
Linda Speight, a hydrometeorologist at the University of Reading in
Britain, who studies how flooding occurs. She blamed poor communication
about the high risk posed by the flooding as contributing to the
significant loss of life.
For now German politicians made a point of not wanting to appear to be
politicizing a calamity, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said she
planned to visit the stricken state of Rhineland-Palatinate, after
returning from
talks in Washington.
But the natural disaster had all the hallmarks of an event that has in the
past reshaped political fortunes in German election seasons like this one.
Armin Laschet, the conservative leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, who is
vying to succeed Ms. Merkel after national elections on Sept. 26, told a
news conference Friday, “Our state is experiencing a flood catastrophe of
historic scale.”
“We have to make the state more climate-proof,” said Mr. Laschet, who is
facing his strongest challenge from the environmentalist Green party. “We
have to make Germany climate neutral even faster.”
A flooded street in Erftstadt, Germany. Credit...Thilo
Schmuelgen/Reuters
But his state was among the hardest hit, and once the floodwaters recede
he and Ms. Merkel may yet face questions about why their political
strongholds were not better prepared.
German officials said Friday their warning system, which includes a
network of sensors that measure river levels in real time, functioned as
it was supposed to. The problem, they said, was an amount of rain they had
never seen before — falling so rapidly that it engorged even small streams
and rivers not normally considered threats.
To describe the events of recent days as a 100-year flood would be an
understatement, said Uwe Kirsche, a spokesman for the German Weather
Service, calling it a flood the likes of which had not been seen in
perhaps a millennium.
“With these small rivers, they have never experienced anything like that,”
Mr. Kirsche said. “Nobody could prepare because no one expected something
like this.”
On Tuesday Felix Dietsch, a meteorologist for the German Weather Service,
went on YouTube
to warn that some areas of southwest Germany could receive previously
unimaginable volumes of rain. Up to 70 liters, or more than 18 gallons, of
water could pour down on an area of one square meter within a few hours,
he warned.
The weather service, a government agency, assigned its most extreme storm
warning, code purple, to the Eifel and Mosel regions. It was one of
numerous warnings that the weather service issued on Twitter and other
media earlier this week that were also transmitted to state officials and
local officials, fire departments and police.
But the waters rose so swiftly, to heights beyond previously recorded
record levels, that some communities’ response plans were rendered utterly
insufficient while others were caught off guard entirely.
A spokesman for the office responsible for monitoring floods and alerting
local officials in Rhineland-Palatinate said that all warnings had been
received from the weather service and passed along to local communities as
planned.
The aftermath of flooding on Friday in Bad Muenstereifel,
Germany. Credit...Ina
Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But what happened after that is critical, and not entirely clear.
In the village of Müsch, at the junction of the Ahr and Trierbach Rivers,
Michael Stoffels, 32, said that he had gotten no warning from the
government, but that a neighbor had called to alert him to the rapidly
rising waters on Wednesday.
He rushed home from the retail store he manages nearby to salvage what he
could. He was lucky, he said, since he has storage on the ground level and
his living area is above that so the 12 feet of water that his home took
on did not inflict significant damage.
But the village of 220 people got clobbered by flash floods that one
resident, Maria Vazquez, said did their work in less than two hours. On
Friday evening, it was without electricity, running water or cellphone
coverage.
The river banks were scenes of devastation, with crushed cars and huge
tree stumps, while many of the cobbled streets were covered with mud and
debris. Truckloads of broken furniture, tree branches and chunks of stone
were being driven slowly over downed power lines.
The village of Schuld was particularly hard hit. Credit...Sascha
Steinbach/EPA, via Shutterstock
“A lot of good cars crashed or got crushed,’’ said Ms. Vazquez, who works
in a nearby auto repair shop. “I work with cars, so that’s sad, but I just
hope that all the people are OK”
Across the border in Belgium, 20 people were confirmed dead and 20
remained missing, the country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said on
Friday, calling the floods “the most disastrous that our country has ever
known.”
Waters rose on lakes in Switzerland and across waterways in the
Netherlands, leaving hundreds of houses without power and submerging the
city center of Valkenburg in the Netherlands, although neither country
suffered deaths or the destruction inflicted on German towns.
Medard Roth, the mayor of Kordel, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate,
defended the warning systems and said that he activated his town’s
emergency flood response once he had been alerted that the waters of the
Kyll River were approaching dangerous levels. But the waters rose too
rapidly to be held back by the usual measures.
“Already on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. the Kordel fire brigade began
setting up the security measures,” Mr. Roth told Bild, a German newspaper.
“By 6 p.m., everything was already under water. Nobody could have
predicted that.”
Ursula Heinen-Esser, the environment minister for the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia, said during an online presentation Friday that
floodwaters had reached “levels never before recorded.”
The Blessem district of Erftstadt, in western Germany, was
devastated. Credit...Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The German flood warning system leaves it up to local officials to decide
what action to take, on the theory that they are best informed about local
terrain and what people or property lies in the path of an overflowing
river.
In some cases it appears that warnings were issued in time. In the city of
Wuppertal, located in a valley bisected by the Wupper River, a crisis
committee including police, the fire department and city officials used
social media to urge people to stay at home.
Early on Thursday, shortly after midnight, they sounded a warning siren,
which sounds eerily like the kind used during World War II, to alert
residents to move to higher floors or evacuate as the waters surged.
Wuppertal suffered property damage, such as flooding in the orchestra pit
of the local opera house, but no fatalities, said Martina Eckermann, a
spokeswoman for the city.
But in other places the warnings came too late.
In the Ahrweiler district of neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, regional
officials issued their first warning to residents living near the banks of
the river as it approached its record level of 3 meters, or nearly 10
feet. It wasn’t until three hours later, as the waters pushed beyond the
previous flood record that a state of emergency was declared.
By that time, many people had fled to the upper levels of their homes, but
those who could not move fast enough died, such as 12 handicapped
residents of a care home in Sinzig, who were not alerted in time to be
helped from their ground-floor rooms before the waters surged in.
“The warnings arrived,” Mr. Kirsche of the German Weather Service said.
“But the question is why didn’t evacuations take place sooner? That’s
something we have to think about.”
A
The
death toll has passed 100 and hundreds more people remain missing in
Belgium and Germany after strong rains caused rivers to burst and wash
away buildings. Credit...Rhein-Erft-Kreis/Cologne District Government, via Associated Press
Rescue
workers toiled on Friday night to reach people in remote German
villages hit by some of the most severe flooding Europe had experienced
in decades, as questions began to be raised about lapses in the
country’s elaborate flood warning system.
The scenes of devastation from the floods came from all around Western Europe as the death toll passed 125 on Friday, with another 1,300 people still
missing. Roads buckled and washed away. Cars piled atop one another.
Houses were inundated to the roof tiles. Frightened residents were being
evacuated in the shovels of earth movers.
But
nowhere was affected more than Germany, where hundreds were still
unaccounted for and the death toll had reached 106 and was expected to
rise as rescue workers combed through the debris. At least 20 were
reported dead in Belgium.
A European
weather agency had 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.
German officials
said Friday their warning system, which includes a network of sensors
that measure river levels in real time, functioned as it was supposed
to. The problem, they said, was an amount of rain they had never seen
before — falling so rapidly that it engorged even small streams and
rivers not normally considered threats.
Extreme
downpours like the ones that occurred in Germany are among the most
visible and damaging signs that the climate is changing as a result of
warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that they
are now occurring more frequently, and scientists point to a simple
reason: A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which creates
extreme rainfall.
In Central Europe
rescue efforts were hampered, with electricity and communications
networks down, roads and bridges washed out, and drinking water scarce.
The worst hit were thinly populated, rural areas.
In the city of Schleitheim, Switzerland, where a river burst its banks, residents recorded videos of cars being washed through the streets in a swirling flood of muddy water and debris.
Germans
struggled even to grasp the scale of the calamity in their country.
Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her shock and solidarity from Washington, where she was visiting the White House.
Politicians of all stripes called for a truce in the German election
campaign. The focus was on how to deal with a disaster that was growing
by the hour, with thousands left homeless, in addition to the missing.
In Belgium,the
Meuse river overflowed its banks, flooding villages and the center of
Liège, leaving thousands without power. The official death toll stands
at 20 dead and 20 missing, the authorities said.
“We
are still waiting for the final assessment, but these floods could have
been the most disastrous that our country has ever known,” Alexander De
Croo, Belgium’s prime minister said on Friday.
Relatives
of those missing grappled with the fear of the unknown. The authorities
in the Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate said late Thursday
that 1,300 people remained unaccounted for in their region, where the
Ahr river swelled to an angry torrent late Wednesday, ripping through
the towns and villages that hugged its banks.
The New York Times
One
of the places in Germany hardest hit by the flooding was tiny Schuld,
where the destruction arrived with remarkable speed in the once-tidy
village. After the river swelled, vehicles bobbed like bath toys, six
houses collapsed and half of those that remained standing had gaping
holes torn by floating debris.
“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.
At
least 50 people were confirmed dead in the Ahrweiler district, where
torrents of water rushed through towns and villages, washing away cars,
homes and businesses.
In Sinzig, a
town in the district, efforts to evacuate a care home for people with
severe disabilities came just moments before the gushing waters swept
through the lower levels, killing 12 of the residents.
A church and cemetery after flooding in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany. Credit...Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via Shutterstock
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 at least 125 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 shown a warmer atmosphere can
hold more moisture, generating more, and more powerful, rainfall.
The
floods that cut a wide path of destruction this week through Germany,
Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands were bigger than any on record,
according to meteorologists and German officials.
German
officials said Friday their warning system, which includes a network of
sensors that measure river levels in real time, functioned as it was
supposed to. The problem, they said, was an amount of rain they had
never seen before — falling so rapidly that it engorged even small
streams and rivers not normally considered threats.
To
describe the events of recent days as a 100-year flood would be an
understatement, said Uwe Kirsche, a spokesman for the German Weather
Service.
“With these small rivers,
they have never experienced anything like that,” Mr. Kirsche said.
“Nobody could prepare because no one expected something like this.”
On Tuesday, Felix Dietsch, a meteorologist for the German Weather Service, went on YouTube to warn that some areas of southwest Germany could receive previously unimaginable volumes of rain.
The
weather service, a government agency, assigned its most extreme storm
warning, code purple, to the Eifel and Mosel regions, one of numerous
government warnings issued on Twitter and other media earlier this week
and transmitted to state and local officials.
But
the waters rose so swiftly that some communities’ response plans were
insufficient while others were caught off guard entirely.
Medard
Roth, the mayor of Kordel, in the hard-hit state of
Rhineland-Palatinate, said that he activated his town’s emergency flood
response once Kyll River approached dangerous water levels. But the
waters rose too rapidly to be held back by the usual measures.
“By 6 p.m., everything was already under water,” Mr. Roth told Bild, a German newspaper. “Nobody could have predicted that.”
Ursula
Heinen-Esser, the environment minister for the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia, said on Friday that floodwaters had reached “levels
never before recorded.”
The German
flood warning system leaves it up to local officials to decide what
action to take, on the theory that they are best informed about local
terrain and what people or property lies in the path of an overflowing
river.
In the Ahrweiler district of
neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, regional officials issued their first
warning to residents living near the banks of the river as it approached
its record level of 3 meters, or nearly 10 feet. Three hours later, a
state of emergency was declared.
By
that time, many people had fled to the upper levels of their homes, and
those who could not move fast enough died, including 12 handicapped
people in an assisted living home in Sinzig.
“The
warnings arrived,” Mr. Kirsche of the German Weather Service said. “But
the question is why didn’t evacuations take place sooner? That’s
something we have to think about.”
The bridge over the Ahr River in Müsch was destroyed in this week’s flooding. Credit...Steven Erlanger/The New York Times
MÜSCH,
Germany — The bridge that spans the River Ahr washed away last night at
around 10:00, said Michael Stoffels, 32, whose own house got flooded by
about 12 feet of water.
Müsch, a
village of 220 people at the junction of the Ahr and Trierbach rivers,
was clobbered by the flash floods that have inundated this part of
Germany. Only one person has died, but Müsch on Friday evening was
without electricity, running water or cellphone coverage.
Residents
and their friends were trying to clean up their battered homes, cracked
streets and ruined cars. Local firefighters, like Nils Rademacher, 21,
were managing the traffic of bulldozers, small trucks and backhoes,
while instructing drivers that roads farther into the river valley were
blocked with trees or made impassable by fallen bridges.
“A
lot of good cars crashed or got crushed,’’ said Maria Vazquez, who
works in a nearby auto repair shop. “I work with cars, so that’s sad,
but I just hope that all the people are OK.”
The water rose to flood the village in less than two hours on Wednesday, and came halfway up the houses, Ms. Vazquez said.
The
riverbanks were scenes of devastation, with crushed cars and thick tree
stumps, while many of the cobbled streets were covered with mud and
debris. Truckloads of broken furniture, tree branches and chunks of
stone were being driven slowly over downed power lines.
The
yellow road sign that tells drivers that they have entered Müsch was
pulled out of the ground, laying bent and nearly adrift in the Trierbach
River.
Mr. Stoffels said that he had
no warning from the government, but that he rushed home from the retail
store he manages nearby when a neighbor called. He was lucky, he said,
since he has storage on the ground level and his living area is above
that. The children’s playground next to his home, along the Ahr, was
shattered, as was the main village electrical station, even before the
bridge washed away.
He and his
brother, who traveled 100 miles to help, and his friends, all wearing
boots and muddy clothes, were trying to clean up as best they could. It
helped, he said, that Müsch, in the Ahrweiler District of
Rhineland-Palatinate close to the border with North Rhine-Westphalia, is
farming country.
“Nearly everyone has
a small tractor or a bulldozer of some kind,’’ he said. And it was true
— the local firefighters were there, but there was little government
presence, residents said. On Thursday, Mr. Stoffels said, “a couple of
soldiers came for a time and a policeman looked around.”
Not far away, larger villages and towns were devastated, and more than 1,000 people are reported missing by the authorities.
Roger Lewentz, Rhineland-Palatinate’s interior minister, was unable to give an exact number of missing in his state.
“We
do not yet know for sure whether some of them may be on vacation or
simply unavailable. After all, the power and telephone connections are
down in many affected locations,” he told Der Spiegel.
“There
haven’t been floods like this here in 100 years,’’ said Sebastian
Stich, 28, an office worker from nearby Barweiler who came to help his
neighbors. “The bridges, the power, it’s all gone.’’
— Steven Erlanger
The Ahr river overran its banks in the village of Insul, Germany. Credit...Michael Probst/Associated Press
Was the flooding caused by climate change?
Tying
a single weather event to climate change requires extensive attribution
analysis, and that takes time, but scientists know one thing for sure:
Warmer air holds more moisture, and that makes it more likely that any
given storm will produce more precipitation.
For every 1 Celsius degree of warming, in fact, air can hold 7 percent more moisture.
On
average, the world has warmed by a little more than 1 degree Celsius
(about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, when societies
began pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“Any
storm that comes along now has more moisture to work with,” said
Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research
Center in Massachusetts. “That’s the straightforward connection to the
increased frequency of heavy downpours.”
And, although it is still a subject of debate, some scientists say climate change might be causing storms to linger longer.
Some
studies suggest that rapid warming in the Arctic is affecting the jet
stream. One consequence of that, said Hayley Fowler, a professor of
climate change impacts at Newcastle University in England, is that the
river of wind is weakening and slowing down at certain times during the
year, including summer. And that, in turn, affects weather systems
farther south.
“That means the storms
have to move more slowly,” Dr. Fowler said. The storm that caused the
flooding was practically stationary, she noted.
The combination of more moisture and a stalled storm system means a lot of rain can fall over a given area.
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, one of the primary scientists with World Weather Attribution, a group that quickly analyzesextreme
weather events to see whether they were made more likely, or not, by
climate change, said the group was discussing whether they would study
the German floods.
Beyond the speed of
a weather system and its moisture content, there are many factors that
affect flooding that can make an analysis difficult. Local topography
has to be taken into account, as that can affect how much runoff gets
into which rivers.
Human impacts can
complicate the analysis even further. Development near rivers, for
instance, can make runoff worse by reducing the amount of open land that
can absorb rain. Infrastructure built to cope with heavy runoff and
rising rivers may be under-designed and inadequate. — Henry Fountain | John Schwartz
Part of the historic center of Prague, Czech Republic, was underwater in August 2002. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The
floods devastating Europe have killed scores of people, leaving at
least 1,300 missing, uprooting families, causing massive financial
damage and reducing homes and cars to the state of floating bath toys.But it is not the first time the continent has been buffeted by a deluge. Here are some of the other major lethal floods and flooding caused by storms in recent years:
February and May 2014
A house damaged by flooding in Krupanj, Serbia, in 2014.Credit...Dragan Karadarevic/European Pressphoto Agency
A 7-year-old boy dead after falling ill in a flooded home in Surrey. A kayaker drowned on a swollen Welsh river.A coastal railroad ripped up by waves in Cornwall.In
a matter of months in 2014, at least 5,000 houses in Britain were
damaged in what was then seen as one of the rainiest seasons in nearly
250 years. While some blamed the flooding on the austerity measures of
David Cameron, the prime minister at the time, others pointed to climate
change. In May of that same year, the heaviest rains and floods in 120
years hit Bosnia and Serbia, killing at least 33 people,
forcing thousands out of their homes, and cutting off power in 100,000
households in Serbia, as several months’ worth of rainfall fell in a
matter of days.
June 2013
A house near Deggendorf, Germany, surrounded by floodwaters in June 2013. Credit...Armin Weigel/European Pressphoto Agency
Germany
is no stranger to flooding. In Bitterfeld, in eastern Germany, some
10,000 people were asked to leave their homes in June 2013 after a levee
on the Mulde River burst, amid some of the worst flooding that some
German regions had seen in centuries. More than 600 residents of Dresden
were brought to safety as electricity and water services to the city’s
affected center were cut off. Chancellor Angela Merkel, now tested by
the current flooding, showed her mettle at the time, touring three of
the hardest hit areas to wade through ankle-deep floodwaters and visit
victims of the flood.
January 2007
Storm-driven waves batter the port of Wimereux in northern France in 2007. Credit...Philippe Huguen/Agence France-Presse
The
storm was called Kyrill by German meteorologists, and it spurred
unrelenting rain in Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium and the
Netherlands. The howling gale churned through the British Isles and
Northern Europe, uprooting trees, shattering windows, flooding beaches
and forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights at airports from
London to Frankfurt. According to the European Environment Agency,
Kyrill killed 46 people and resulted in overall losses worth 8 billion
euros. At the time, it was one of the most damaging extreme weather
episodes ever recorded in Europe. The name Kyrill stemmed from a German
practice of naming weather systems. Anyone may name one, for a fee, and
three siblings had paid to name the system as a 65th birthday gift for
their father, not realizing it would grow into a fierce storm.
August 2005
A woman emptying a bucket into the flooded Aare River in Thun, Switzerland, in 2005. Credit...Peter Schneider/Keystone, via Associated Press
Such
was the deluge in Central and Southern Europe in 2005 that in the Alps,
military helicopters were deployed to ferry in supplies, evacuate
stranded tourists and even stranded cows in mountain pastures threatened
by rising water. The floods left dozens dead. In Romania, which was
badly affected by the flooding, victims were drowned as torrents of
water rushed into their homes. Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and
Switzerland were also buffeted by the flooding. The scenes of
devastation were visceral and shocking. The Aare River broke through the
windows of a children’s clothes shop in Bern, leaving baby strollers
and toys floating in muddy water. Much of the historic old city of
Lucerne remained underwater. Meanwhile, in southern Poland, rivers broke
their banks and at least seven bridges collapsed.
August 2002
Rescue workers in rafts searched for residents stranded by flooding in Prague in 2002. Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images
In
2002, some of the worst rains since 1890 pelted the Czech Republic,
putting part of the historic center of Prague underwater and resulting
in 50,000 residents being ordered to evacuate, as rivers swelled by near
constant rain. The death toll from the floods, which ravaged East and
Central Europe, including Germany and Austria, and southern Russia, was more than 110. The flooding caused billions of dollars worth of damage. The floods helped propel Germany’s chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, to re-election because of his
management of the crisis. In Austria, the Salzach River burst its banks
south of Salzburg and threatened to inundate the city at the height of
its famous summer festival, forcing the authorities to close most
bridges and major roads. Floodwaters rose in Hungary and Germany, and in
northern Austria the authorities halted river traffic on parts of the
Danube. — Dan Bilefsky
Oliver Henry, a firefighter with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after helping extinguish a small fire in Mattawa, Wash., last month. Credit...Grant Hindsley for The New York Times
An
increasingly hot, dry and deadly summer has gripped much of the Western
United States, with heat claiming lives in the Pacific Northwest and
Canada in record numbers, and a deepening drought threatening water supplies — all of which is setting the stage for another potentially catastrophic fire season in California and neighboring states.
A fourth major heat wave was forecast to roast parts of the region again this weekend. It comes
two weeks after a record-shattering spate of high temperatures — which
scientists said would been virtually impossible without climate change — killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada.
At
least 67 weather stations from Washington State through New Mexico have
recorded their hottest temperatures ever this summer, the National Weather Service said this week. Those records stretched back at least 75 years.
The heat helped drive the rapid growth of a wildfire in southern Oregon, known as the Bootleg Fire,
that has burned more than 240,000 acres — about a third the size of
Rhode Island, America’s smallest state. The fire, the largest of dozens
across the West, has destroyed about two dozen homes, threatens 1,900
more and has set off a wave of evacuations.
The
fire also burned across a power line corridor that serves as a major
contributor to the electrical grid in California, where officials have
issued warnings this week asking residents to conserve power by turning up their thermostats and turning off appliances, or risk rolling blackouts.
One
part of the West saw some relief from the crushing heat this week, as
monsoon rains fell on the Southwest, including New Mexico and Arizona.
But the result was yet another disaster: flash flooding that left some city streets in Arizona awash in muddy water and
propelled a torrent of water through part of the Grand Canyon, washing
away a camp where about 30 people on a rafting trip were spending the
night, killing one.
As the Earth warms from climate change, heat waves are becoming hotter and more frequent. “And as bad as it might seem
today,” Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of
Michigan, recently told The New York Times, “this is about as good as
it’s going to get if we don’t get global warming under control.” — Scott Dodd
The overflowing Meuse River near Aasterberg, the Netherlands, on Friday. Credit...Sem Van Der Wal/EPA, via Shutterstock
A
breach in the dike along the Juliana Canal in the southern Netherlands
on Friday was closed by the Dutch military by dumping hundreds of
sandbags into the growing hole. Hours before, thousands had been told to
evacuate after the dike was breached along the canal, a 22-mile
waterway that regulates the Meuse River.
The river’s water level is at heights not witnessed since 1911, the Dutch national broadcaster NOS reported.
That
is no small thing in a water-logged country where taming water has been
a matter of survival for centuries and the imperative to keep levels
under control is inextricably bound up with Dutch identity.Much
of the country sits below sea level and is gradually sinking. Climate
change has also exacerbated the twin threats of storms and rising tides.
Residents of the villages of Brommelen, Bunde, Geulle and Voulwames were ordered to evacuate immediately, after initially being told to move to higher floors in their homes. About 10,000 people live in the area.
The
local authorities said there was “a large hole” in the dike, prompting
fears that the entire area would be flooded. While parts of the area
were flooded, a disaster was averted after the breach was closed. NOS
said the dike was still unstable and continued to be monitored.
Upriver,
near the city of Venlo, evacuations were ordered for whole
neighborhoods and surrounding villages, in total 10,700 people and 7,100
houses, the municipality said in a tweet. People have until 6 p.m.
local time to leave their homes.
Record
water levels are moving through the Meuse River, prompting evacuations
and fresh inspections of dikes along the river that empties into the
North Sea. The river is a key waterway for European shipping
connections.
Following flooding in
recent decades, the Dutch authorities have designated special areas that
can be flooded with excess water when critical levels are reached.
The
Netherlands has so far been spared much of the death and destruction
that this week’s flooding has caused in Germany and Belgium. But in
Valkenburg, a city in the south of the Netherlands with about 16,000
residents, damage was severe. Hundreds of houses were without power, and
the center of the city was flooded.
“The
damage is incalculable,” Mayor Daan Prevoo of Valkenburg told the
Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. He predicted that repairs would take weeks. — Thomas Erdbrink
Rowing a boat down a flooded residential street in Angleur, on the outskirts of Liège, Belgium, on Friday. Credit...Valentin Bianchi/Associated Press
In
Liège, Belgium’s third-largest city, much of the early panic eased on
Friday as residents said the waters of the Meuse river seemed to recede,
at least a bit.
Fears that a major
dam might break led the mayor to call for parts of the city to be
evacuated late Thursday. But on Friday, people were allowed back, though
they were told to stay away from the river, which was still lapping
over its banks.
“The situation is now
under control, and people can return to their homes,” Laurence
Comminette, the spokeswoman for the mayor, said in an interview. “Of
course not everyone can go back, because many homes have been destroyed.
But there is no longer an imminent danger of more flooding.”
Georges
Lousberg, 78, said he thought the crisis was largely over in the city.
“It did not rain much today, and the weather is supposed to be better
the rest of the week.”
He said there
had been times when the Meuse was even higher, especially before walls
were built along its banks. “The worst flooding was in 1926,” he said.
Prasanta
Char, 34, a postdoctoral student in physics at the University of Liège,
said he had been anxious about rain overnight after the mayor’s
evacuation call.
He had gone looking
to buy water, but had a hard time because so many stores were closed. He
finally found a small convenience store in the shuttered city.
“It’s
much worse in Germany, and a lot of the roads are shut and the trains
are stopped,” he said, “I’m still a bit anxious about rain, but today it
seems better.” — Steven Erlanger
A resident cleaning the streets of Ahrweiler-Bad Neenah, Germany, after flooding on Thursday. Credit...Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Forecasts predicting improved weather for Western Europe over the weekend offered some hope amid the deluge, potentially aiding search-and-rescue efforts in areas devastated by floods.
The
heavy rain in Germany in the Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate
was forecast to let up later Friday and over the weekend, after flooding
left 1,300 people unaccounted for in the region. Emergency workers put
sandbags in place to stem the rising waters in the region’s remote
villages, like Schuld, where heavy flows of water washed away six homes and left more close to collapse.
On
Saturday and Sunday, there is about a 20 percent chance of rain in that
area, and temperatures are expected to rise above 70 degrees Fahrenheitwith
partial sunshine later in the day, according to Weather.com. Conditions
are likewise expected to improve in the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia, also in western Germany, where at least 43 people have
died in the flooding.
Andreas
Friedrich, a meteorologist for Germany’s national weather service, said
that dry, sunny weather was likely over the next few days in the western
states hit by floods. The weather service has issued a warning about
possible floods in the touristy area of southeastern Germany, north of
the Alps, over the weekend, but conditions are not expected to be as bad
as they were in the western part of the country, he said.
In Belgium, the weather is also expected to clear up over the weekend. The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium forecast only light rain in the hilly Ardennes region, which
experienced heavy flooding over the past few days. In Liège, which was
also hard hit, there was a 3 percent chance of precipitation on
Saturday, according to the AccuWeather forecasting service.
Alex
Dewalque, a spokesman for the meteorological institute, said water
levels in the worst-hit parts of Belgium were already falling, making it
easier for emergency workers to rescue stranded people and search for
casualties. He said the coming days would be much drier and with warmer
temperatures, and that there were no flood warnings.
More
rain was expected in Switzerland’s northern Alps on Friday, however,
and officials warned of more potential flooding in parts of the country.
Lake Lucerne reached critical levels, forcing the closing of some
bridges and roadways.
Sarah Schöpfer,a
meteorologist at Switzerland’s Federal Office of Meteorology and
Climatology MeteoSwiss, said she expected rainfall over the affected
areas of Switzerland to lighten.
“We
expect that tonight the precipitation activity weakens further and
tomorrow it mainly affects the eastern Swiss Alps (mainly regions that
did not get the highest amounts of rain during the last few days),” she
said in an email. “So apart from the last showers today and tomorrow,
the following days will be dry.”
