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Guilt on Friday: village in ruins
Photo: Christoph Stache / AFP
For a brief moment, Stefan Magdziah thought he could save his cat too.
But the animal had retreated onto the arm of the couch when the water rose higher and higher in the living room.
"I tried to hold on to it, but it slipped through my fingers," says Magdziah.
Then he braced himself against the penetrating water and just made it out the door, where the current almost tore him away.
He hasn't seen the cat since.
Stefan Magdziah is standing in front of the remains of his former garage entrance on Friday afternoon when he tells the story.
"This was once paved," he says, pointing to a hole filled with mud and water that extends to the foundations of the house and underneath the back of the house.
Magdziah and his girlfriend Sandra Elsermann are therefore no longer allowed in: danger of collapse, warns the fire brigade.
Elsermann only bought the house a few years ago, and together they renovated and modernized it piece by piece, including a new wood pellet heating system.
Now it's a muddy, partially washed-out shack that threatens to collapse over their heads.
"That was the dream of owning a home," she says resignedly.
On Wednesday evening, Magdziah and Elsermann managed to get out of the house on Bergstrasse in the lower-lying center of the village of Schuld to safety at the last minute.
A firefighter had knocked frantically on the door and called for everyone to leave the house quickly, Magdziah reports.
Five minutes later, the basement was already full, ten minutes later the entire ground floor.
Magdziah and Elsermann first spent a few hours with friends who live on a higher street.
Then they tried to get some sleep in an emergency shelter in a neighboring town.
But the thoughts of the rapidly rising, devastating masses of water still troubled the two on Friday.
"You just can't believe how fast it went," they say several times.
Rubble in the middle of the village
The couple's neighbors, who came back to town on Friday to look at the damage, describe it in a similar way.
A woman in a yellow anorak has three bags of clothes in front of her that her husband has just fetched from the attic of her former home.
Actually, he is not allowed in there, a red flutter tape also signals the considerable danger of a collapse.
"What should we do?
We have nothing else, ”says the woman.
To get into the partially destroyed house at all, her husband first has to climb over an almost three-meter-high mountain of rubble that is now piling up in the middle of the village.
The people in debt are still stunned.
They knew floods again and again from the past, says Helmut Lussi, the local mayor.
"But you just can't do something like Wednesday."
Read the latest news on the storm situation here.
The flood escalated in Schuld in particular because in the early evening, probably shortly after 6 p.m., several cars, small trucks, tree trunks and caravans that had been carried away by the river Ahr jammed in front of one of the three bridges of Schuld and blocked the flow.
Then the water looked for another way: through the middle of the place.
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The consequences were devastating. Several houses simply collapsed, some were washed away, others just look like skeletons. In the former hotel and restaurant "Zum Ahrtal", the water pushed through the panes of the dining room on one side and broke out again on the other side with a large piece of wall. The sales room of the former »Fresh Market Theissen« next door is just a mud dump. Part of the riverside pizzeria building was torn away. As if by a miracle, however, the part in which the operating family and the small children saved themselves to the upper floor remained standing. They held out there until they finally reached a boat with helpers early Thursday morning and was able to take it with them.A married couple over 80 years old had a similar experience in the former "Schlösser bakery" across the street.
There are tons of such stories in debt.
But the most astonishing one has Helmut Lussi, the local mayor.
For a long time they thought in guilt that there were many dead among the villagers.
There were rumors of several bodies washing up a little further downstream.
Many residents could not be found all day on Thursday, and the authorities feared the worst.
On Friday afternoon, however, Lussi counted exactly.
There are injuries, but there is now a sign of life from all residents, says Lussi.
He announced it late on Friday afternoon when Prime Minister Malu Dreyer came to Schuld to see the disaster there.
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Prime Minister Dreyer, Interior Minister Lewentz (left) in debt: "Thank God, at least that"
Photo: Thomas Frey / dpa
"Thank God, at least that," says the head of government. Otherwise there is not much she can do this Friday. After all, it promises people "unbureaucratic and uncomplicated help" in rebuilding.