SINZIG (Germany) • If the calamitous floods that have hit Germany have an emotional centre, it is in Sinzig, a small town between the Rhine and Ahr rivers.
Across Germany, at least 157 people are dead, with hundreds more missing. But the 12 dead in Sinzig have broken hearts all over the country and demonstrated most vividly the tragedies that could have been avoided had flood warnings been better heeded.
They were disabled residents of a care home, the Lebenshilfe Haus, along residential Pestalozzi Street. They were asleep, in the care of a single night watchman, as the waters of the flash flood suddenly rose very early last Thursday, and they were trapped on the first floor of the home and drowned.
Neighbours could hear screaming, they said later, but all the emergency workers could do was to save the other 24 residents on higher floors some three hours later, bringing them out through the windows in small boats.
"Every person who dies is a tragedy," said Ms Tabera Irrle, 23, a train driver who came to Sinzig to help with the cleanup after the floods. "But this is a special sadness," she said, brushing her eyes with muddy hands.
Just beyond her, residents were helping firefighters roll over a ruined red Volkswagen that was blocking the street, while others held barbecue grills over the drains so that when they dumped out floodwater, larger objects would not fall into the city's sewage system.
Dominik Gasper, 17, was helping his parents and uncle clean out the mud and ruined belongings of his grandparents' house on Dreifaltigkeitsweg, a street near the care home.
He knew about the 12 dead, he said. His grandparents, Klaus and Anna Rams, are fine.
The Rams looked haggard and exhausted, both covered with mud, and waved away questions.
The waters crested in Sinzig at more than 7m, the highest in a century, said Mayor Andreas Geron. He said fire trucks tried to warn residents late last Wednesday, but few said they had heard any warning.
Two other Sinzig residents died in this town of 20,000, and a newly renovated bridge over the Ahr collapsed.
Mr Luis Rufino, 50, is a lifelong resident of Sinzig and works for Environmental Service, a company which serves the varied municipalities in the area. He was taking a break from helping the cleanup and was angry about what happened at the Lebenshilfe Haus.
"Our health system is better than in the United States, but they are still trying to avoid costs," he said bitterly.
"So there was only one guy watching over these poor people, and when the lights went out they went into a panic, and when the flood came through they had no chance."
By 3.30am, he said: "There were efforts to evacuate people and dead bodies were floating there."
He looked away, and said: "I'm not here to judge but this system of crisis management didn't work well. When the water started to come hard where the Ahr starts they just had to say - 'Look, a big flood is coming' - and some percentage of all this could have been avoided."
Mr Ulrich van Bebber, the chair of Lebenshilfe, which has operated the care home since it was built 27 years ago as the first residential home for the disabled in the region, told journalists later that "we are all horrified, stunned and infinitely sad". He said those who survived were being cared for.
"We want to keep the Lebenshilfe Haus as a residential facility and, if necessary, rebuild it," Mr van Bebber said.
NYTIMES
