Four dead as floods sweep southern Germany

REICHERTSHOFEN, Germany - Rescuers battled on June 3 to evacuate people from flood zones in southern Germany, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it a “warning” that climate change was getting worse.

Thousands of people in the regions of Bavaria and Baden Wuerttemberg had to leave their homes since torrential rain on May 31 sparked deadly flooding.

More evacuations were called overnight into June 3 as the huge volumes of water caused flood defences to fail.

In Bavaria, some 800 people were asked to leave their homes in the area of Ebenhausen-Werk after a dam burst early June 3.

Residents around Manching-Pichl in the area worst affected by the floods were told to shelter in the upper floors of their homes.

Speaking on a visit to Reichertshofen, in a flood-hit area north of Munich, Mr Scholz said that such floods were no longer a “one-off”.

“This is an indication that something is up here. We must not neglect the task of stopping man-made climate change,” Mr Scholz told journalists.

The floods were “a warning we that we must take with us”, he said.

The Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder, who accompanied Mr Scholz on his visit, said there was no “full insurance” against climate change.

“Events are happening here that have never happened before,” Mr Soeder said, after a state of emergency was declared by districts across his region of Bavaria.

Around 20,000 people in Bavaria alone had been deployed to tackle the consequences of the flood, he said.

Police in Baden-Wuerttemberg on June 3 said a man and a woman were found dead in the basement of their house in Schorndorf following the flood.

The same fate befell a 43-year-old woman in Schrobenhausen, Bavaria, whose body was found by rescuers earlier on June 3.

The discoveries took the total killed by the floods to at least four, following the death of a volunteer fireman whose body was found on June 2.

The 42-year-old volunteer died after his vessel turned over during a flood rescue operation.

Another volunteer, 22, was still missing after his boat also overturned overnight into June 2.

A search operation to find the missing rescue worker had to be stopped due to the exceptionally high waters and strong currents, local police said.

The German Weather Service on June 3 issued new warnings for heavy rain in parts of southern and eastern Germany.

The widespread flooding and continuous rainfall impacted transport in the region with widespread train cancellations and delays.

Train lines leading from Munich to Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Wuerzburg were unusable, rail operator Deutsche Bahn stated on its website.

A landslide near Schwaebisch Gmuend overnight into June 2 caused a high-speed train travelling between Stuttgart and Augsburg to derail, blocking the line. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

Despite Mr Scholz’s pledge to combat climate change, a panel of experts separately said on June 3 that the government’s emissions forecasts through 2030 were unrealistic.

The government had underestimated future emissions in the transport, building and industry sectors, the climate panel said in a report.

Overall, the experts assumed that the government’s emissions-reduction target for 2030 “will not be met”. AFP