No relaxation in sight in Germany: dike breach now threatens Experts are concerned about executions in the US – violation of the ban on torture

It’s raining and raining and the chance of dike breaches increases every day. The persistent rain is expected to continue in parts of Germany until Saturday. The German Weather Service (DWD) originally issued warnings until Thursday evening. They were extended on Wednesday. This means that the situation in the flood areas is likely to deteriorate again. The consequences of the rain were already measurable on Wednesday: some rivers had even more water.

Large areas of land were reported in Lower Saxony, southern Saxony-Anhalt and northern Thuringia. It is difficult to estimate the size of the total flood area. Authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia spoke of another sharp rise in water levels due to the persistent rain.

Now other states are also looking concerned at their rivers, which were recently spared from flooding. In Hesse, authorities expected water levels in Fulda and Lahn and their tributaries to rise. The responsible state office also expected the water level on the larger rivers Rhine, Main and Neckar to rise. In Saarland there were many fire brigade operations due to too much water.

100,000 helpers are deployed in Lower Saxony alone

Lower Saxony and Bremen are already experiencing flooding before Christmas – the situation is the worst there. “We are dealing with a situation that has been repeatedly summarized in three words in recent days: critical but stable,” Prime Minister Stephan Weil said. He spoke of enormous bodies of water. According to the State Agency for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation, water levels have risen again, especially in the catchment areas of the Hunte near Bremen and Hase in Emsland. Many meters showed the highest reporting level, such as the Leine and Oker.

Lower Saxony now also uses sandbag supplies from other states. With the exception of a small remainder, the company’s own reserve of about 1.9 million sandbags that the company has stored since the start of the flood situation before Christmas has now been exhausted, according to the responsible state agency for water management, coastal and nature conservation. The country has now received approximately 1.5 million additional sandbags from other states.

There are significantly more than 100,000 helpers working across the country, Prime Minister Weil said. He appealed to companies to continue exempting them from their actual work to deal with the flood situation. This appeal applies to the coming days and, if necessary, also to the coming week.

How long do the dikes last?

The dikes, which are largely resistant to the water masses, have prevented worse. The question is: for how long? “So far we have not seen any dike breaches because the technical protection against flooding works well,” says Torsten Schlurmann, head of the Ludwig Franzius Institute for Hydraulic, Estuarine and Coastal Engineering at Leibniz University Hannover. “The dikes provide sufficient protection against flooding, as long as no water remains on them for a longer period of time.”

The stability of a dike then depends on many different factors: for example, how large is the gradient between the pressure caused by the water level in the river and the land side of the dike, what material the dike is made of and what substrate it is made of. Gets up. An important task for the emergency services is therefore to continuously monitor the dikes, for example with dike walkers on the ground or with the help of drones from the air.

Scholz wants to get an idea of ​​the situation

Several places along the Helme, which flows from Thuringia into the Kelbra Dam, then through parts of the Mansfeld-Südharz district in southern Saxony-Anhalt and then back to Thuringia, are threatened by the water masses. Bundeswehr soldiers were asked. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a visit to Saxony-Anhalt. He wants to learn more about the flooding situation in the south of the state in Oberröblingen, a district of Sangerhausen, together with Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff and Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke on Thursday.

A visit to a dike that is in danger of breaking is also planned. Scholz, Lemke and Haseloff also want to go to a sandbag filling factory in the city of Berga and talk to volunteers. He was already in Lower Saxony.

Water levels also rose in the north – as a result of a storm surge in the Baltic Sea. However, there was no major damage on Wednesday afternoon. In Britain, a driver was killed when the storm caused a tree to fall on his vehicle. As a result, there were floods in northern France, local power outages, evacuations and interruptions of drinking water supplies.

Expert: Floods are likely to occur more often in the future

As a result of the flooding, experts are calling for a rethink when it comes to flood protection. “In the course of climate change, where the flooding processes will change, we will certainly see other types of floods in the future,” says Ralf Merz, hydrologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Halle (Saale), about Deutschlandfunk. “Such prolonged flooding will certainly occur more often in the future.” A lot of damage could be avoided.

It is not yet possible to quantify how much the total damage will be. SPD budget politicians again discussed suspending the debt brake. “The floods are causing enormous damage, especially in Lower Saxony,” SPD member of the Bundestag Andreas Schwarz told Spiegel magazine. “We could suspend the debt brake on these costs.” (dpa/aargauerzeitung.ch)