Germany struggles to hold back ‘catastrophic’ flood waters
GERMANY: Thousands of emergency workers, troops and volunteers
in Germany battled Sunday against central Europe’s worst floods in over
a decade, which have forced mass evacuations and which one politician
termed a “national catastrophe”.
The focus was on the eastern city of Magdeburg, where vast outlying
areas were covered in a sea of brown water, sparked by recent torrential
rains which have washed down the Elbe river system from the Czech
Republic.
The water level in Magdeburg reached 7.45 metres (24 feet) in the
morning, vastly higher than the usual level of around two metres and
worse than massive floods that struck the region in 2002, local
authorities said.
Almost 3,000 residents were evacuated from thecity’s Rothensee
district, where hundreds of army troops were working to reinforce a dyke
protecting a crucial electricity facility to prevent a wider power
outage in the city.
More townships were evacuated around Barby, where the Saale tributary
meets the Elbe. Some of the 8,000 residents of the nearby town of Aken
were taken to safety on military armoured personnel carriers and
ambulances.
President Joachim Gauck was due to visit the flood-hit states of
Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and join a church service with
emergency crew and residents in the town of Halle.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government was planning a crisis meeting
with state premiers to assess how their governments will share the cost
of the disaster, the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily reported in its Monday
edition.
AFP
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