136 people died in the flood disaster in Rhineland-Palatinate, including 135 in the Ahr region and one person in the Trier area. Thousands of houses were destroyed, and roads and bridges were washed away.
The public prosecutor's office investigated for more than two and a half years on suspicion of negligent homicide in 135 cases and negligent bodily harm in office through omission. Former Ahr district administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU) and an employee from the crisis team had always rejected the allegations... The Ahr flood disaster should not be dealt with in a criminal trial, says the public prosecutor in Koblenz, Germany, Mario Mannweiler, on Thursday. The background to the investigation was allegations of inadequate crisis management and inadequate preparation for such a disaster in July 2021 in the Ahr Valley. "We have to get rid of the idea that such extreme events always have to have someone criminally responsible. Some events just happen and cannot be controlled by a single person," he says. The investigation against Pföhler had already been initiated in August 2021. Extensive data was examined, and more than 300 witnesses were interviewed. The current Ahr district administrator Cornelia Weigand sees moral responsibility in addition to political responsibility. The situation remained unclear until the end because the flood was so unimaginable, said Mannweiler. The conclusion of the investigation had been postponed several times, among other things because the public prosecutor wanted to wait for the results of the investigative committee in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament. It is also not the job of the public prosecutor's office to assess political responsibility or make a moral judgment, he said. The public prosecutor's office does not have to decide whether someone has failed in character in this case, he added. He said that discontinuing the investigation was not a discretionary matter. The investigation was purely a criminal investigation.