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Photo: MARC JOHN / imago images / Marc John
The VIP rooms of the Nürburgring offer an unusual perspective on the dimensions of the catastrophe: parked white ambulances as far as the eye can see.
Then there are the olive-green Bundeswehr trucks, the technical relief organization in blue, the fire brigade in red. Hundreds of vehicles are parked in the interior of the racetrack, and some are constantly driving in and out.
"Disaster control district Neunkirchen" can be read on the vehicles or "Malteser Stadt Memmingen".
Professional helpers have come from all over Germany to help in the devastated Ahr valley.
"We have never had an assignment like this before," says Lars Ritscher on the balcony of the VIP center.
It is nine o'clock on Saturday evening, Ritscher has just come from the briefing, on the door to the conference room there is a sign that reads "Staff room pick-up marching orders."
Lars Ritscher
Photo:
Jan Friedmann / DER SPIEGEL
Ritscher coordinates the provision of the helpers and their vehicles.
The deputy district fire brigade inspector of the Rhein-Lahn district administration is an experienced crisis manager, he was already on duty during the Elbe flood in 2002.
This is even bigger, according to Ritscher: "The whole broken infrastructure over kilometers, the burden for the emergency services, the emotional suffering of those affected." The fire and disaster protection officer expects the helpers to use the infrastructure of the racing course for several more days have to take.
In the pits, where the fine-tuning of the racing engines is usually worked on, helpers sleep on camp beds.
A couple of hours until it starts again.
The employees of the emergency services can shower in the toilet units installed on site.
There are small packages at the food counter: eco cutlery, Lyoner sausage, fish with mustard sauce in a can, muesli bars, two pieces of water.
Order in the heights, desolation in the valley
The sophisticated logistics up at the Nürburgring contrasts with the destruction in the Ahr valley.
In the devastated village of Schuld, which Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit on Sunday, a lot of heavy equipment is already in use.
The streets have been cleared, some of them temporarily heaped up with sand to make them passable.
But here too, the parts of the caravans that were washed away from the campsite are still hanging in the embankments at the edge, as well as insulation panels from houses.
Almost all the road signs along the river are kinked, and there are uprooted trees in the brown liquid of the river.
In front of the country inn "Zum Köbes" the articulated lorries with the crashed cars gather.
A local building contractor has made equipment available, as well as the THW and the armed forces' clearing tanks.
"We have to restore roads, we have to coordinate the relief supplies that arrive," is how Andreas Solheid, spokesman for the Adenau Volunteer Fire Brigade, describes the current task.
"The tiredness is there, but it goes on and on."
Read the latest news on the flood disaster here.
The entire Ahr valley has been badly hit by the floods and is only passable in parts.
Houses on the river in Fuchshofen have been flooded, but the bridge is still standing.
In Antweiler, the sides of the old stone bridge are milled away.
The water made its way around blocking debris.
In Brückenweg, a resident tells how the flood broke through the windows on the first floor of his house from the inside.
He had to save himself on the second floor.
In the background, friends and family are loading rubble onto a trailer.
Everywhere: People who help each other, farmers and winemakers who use their tractors, groups who stand together in front of muddy houses and encourage each other over coffee.
The cohesion in the valley is great, but so is the need for the most essential everyday things.
No electricity to heat canned food
Tobias and Natascha Lindner distribute bread, rolls or dog food from the trunk of their white station wagon, along with shovels and garbage bags.
You live on the mountain in Blankenheim, a place that has not been so bad.
They have packed relief supplies that have been collected by the volunteer fire brigade, with which they are now driving through the villages.
The couple's experience: sweets go well, water always.
Coffee and tin cans, on the other hand, are not, the people in the Ahr Valley have no electricity to prepare them.
Above all, however, there is a lack of logistics for private helpers, says Tobias Lindner.
For example, there are too few interfaces between the Facebook groups and the administrations.
"There is an enormous power of people who want to step in, but there is a lack of contact points," says Tobias Lindner.
One of these can be found up at the Nürburgring for example. At Tina Klipphahn's phone, the phone rings every few seconds: More volunteers who want to join in, people who ask for clothes or hygiene items. Klipphahn stands behind a beer table in front of the event center at the Nürburgring. Where else there is a celebration, she coordinates the distribution of donations in kind. Hundreds of volunteers are now taking part in the relief effort.
For example, she and her colleagues served the following order from the volunteer fire brigade in debt: "Headlamps, canisters, rubber boots, a children's buggy, adult diapers." Everything had arrived.
"The population is very helpful," says Klipphahn.
In the meantime, the initiative had to announce a freeze on acceptance, and they could no longer comply.
The challenge is not the goods, but their distribution, says Klipphahn.
The volunteers from the Nürburgring give the donations in kind to the deploying troops from the THW or the Bundeswehr.
That works best at the moment, says Klipphahn.
Then she turns to the men in uniform waiting at her table.
"We just want to ask if there is anything new for us," says one.