Flood disaster: decomposition, looting, poor medical care

Enlarge image

Destroyed bridge in the Ahr valley

Photo: Klaus W. Schmidt / imago images / Bonnfilm

Two weeks after the severe flood disaster, the police in Rhineland-Palatinate still count more than 700 injured.

132 people died in the floods.

The infrastructure in the Ahr valley collapsed completely, more than 60 bridges were destroyed.

The police union communicated this to colleagues in an email that SPIEGEL had received.

The electricity and water supplies along the Ahr are said to have been destroyed in small communities.

Streets and houses are also largely affected so much that they threaten to collapse.

None of the campsites along the banks of the Ahr are left.

More than 1200 referrals

The situation report of the Federal Police shows that up to Sunday 44 crimes had been committed in Rhineland-Palatinate, 30 of which were property-related. Due to the progressive decomposition of corpses and carcasses, leaking sewage, heating oil and pesticides, the risk of infection increases for the population and for helpers. In North Rhine-Westphalia there were indications that aid supplies had been stolen and looted, as can be seen from the situation report for the state also affected by the flood disaster. The police issued more than 1,200 dismissals, there were twelve criminal charges and 18 custodial measures for looting or theft.

Medical officers also criticized significant shortcomings in basic medical care. The situation is "still frightening", there is a risk of epidemics in the affected regions, said the chairwoman of the Federal Association of Doctors of the Public Health Service, Ute Teichert, the newspapers of the Funke media group.

The health of the population in the disaster areas is "massively threatened because the infrastructure is not working." Among other things, hospitals and practices were destroyed in some places. Teichert, who headed the health department in the Ahrweiler district affected by the flood until 2012, explained that many people would have to get by without urgently needed medication. This is a big problem, especially for people with diseases such as diabetes or heart disease, the newspaper report said. Now it is important to organize mobile medical units and bring them to the towns.

In the Ahr valley, a temporary bridge of the Technical Relief Organization (THW) is to be put into operation on Saturday.

After asphalt work on both sides for the driveways, the bridge could probably be passable from the beginning of next week, said a THW spokesman.

According to the THW, the two-lane bridge will also be suitable for heavy traffic.

It has been under construction since last weekend and, according to the spokesman, is the largest bridge that the THW has built in Germany so far.

According to the spokesman, five more bridges are currently planned for the THW in the Ahr valley: three pedestrian bridges with a length of 40 meters each and two further travel bridges of 50 meters each.

kha / amp / dpa