Heavy rains and floods lashing western Europe have left no fewer than 59 people dead in Germany and eight in Belgium, with many more people still missing even as rising waters caused several houses to collapse yesterday.
Unusually heavy rains also devastated neighbouring Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium, where no fewer than four people were reported dead and people were ordered to evacuate a riverbank in one city.
In Germany, which is experiencing one of the worst weather disasters since World War II, desperate residents sought refuge on the roofs of their homes as rescue helicopters circled above.
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Africa Today News, New York reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel, on a visit to Washington, said she was ‘shocked’ by the humanitarian ‘disaster’, calling it a ‘tragedy’ for the nation.
She vowed that the government would do ‘everything in its power to, under the most difficult circumstances, save lives, prevent danger and ease suffering’.
North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) premier Armin Laschet, who is running to succeed Merkel in September elections, cancelled a party meeting in Bavaria to survey the damage in his state, Germany’s most populous.
‘We will stand by the towns and people who’ve been affected,’ Laschet, clad in rubber boots, told reporters in the town of Hagen.
He called for ‘speeding up’ global efforts to fight climate change, underlining the link between global warming and extreme weather.
Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.
The North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry tallied four more bodies recovered, taking the region’s toll to at least 31, while neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate said nine more deaths were likely in addition to 19 recovered in the region around the western town of Ahrweiler alone.
Up to 70 people are missing, a police spokesman told reporters.
NRW’s Euskirchen district reported 15 dead, while four more victims were found in the municipality of Schuld south of Bonn where six houses were swept away by floods.
Several other bodies were recovered from flooded cellars across the region.
The environment ministry in Rhineland-Palatinate warned it expected floodwaters on the Rhine and Moselle rivers to rise with more rainfall.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK