Enlarge image
Uprooted trees in Berlin: the fire brigade had their hands full
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
Trains were canceled, tens of thousands of people were without electricity: the first violent autumn storm of the year raged in Germany.
The fire brigade and police deployed hundreds of times nationwide. In Völkersbach in Baden-Württemberg, according to the police, a tree fell on the edge of the forest on a 64-year-old and seriously injured him. In misery in Saxony-Anhalt, a tree fell on a car, the 59-year-old driver was freed by the fire brigade and taken to hospital with serious injuries. The state government reported 36 traffic accidents with four slightly injured people from North Rhine-Westphalia. Several people were trapped in their cars by fallen trees.
A falling tree in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, barely missed a 20-year-old who was just getting out of the car.
However, a branch hit her on the head and she was taken to a clinic.
A 22-year-old said her car was hit by a gust of wind on the A31.
The woman lost control and got off the lane, her car rolled over and stopped on the driver's side - she was seriously injured in the hospital.
In parts of Bavaria, as well as in several places in the Palatinate and Koblenz, the power went out in the morning.
Fallen trees and falling branches also led to power outages in parts of Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
Around 50,000 customers are affected, a spokesman for the Mitteldeutsche Netzgesellschaft Strom announced in the afternoon.
There were train cancellations and delays in numerous federal states. "Hundreds of employees are working to clear trees and other obstacles from the tracks, to repair overhead lines and to record damage," said a DB spokeswoman. Passengers who want to postpone their trip due to the storm can redeem their booked ticket immediately up to and including seven days after the disruption has ended. In the early afternoon the situation slowly improved. “It will take some time for traffic to normalize. But we're going again, ”said a railway spokesman.
For Thursday afternoon and evening, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency warned of a storm surge.
The flood on the North Sea coast will be 1.00 to 1.50 meters above the mean flood, in the Weser and Elbe regions about 1.50 meters above the mean flood.
Further storm surges on Friday cannot be ruled out.
The apex in Hamburg-St.-Pauli should be reached shortly after 6 p.m. on Thursday.
A cyclone caused severe damage in Schwentinental near Kiel.
The chief of operations of the fire brigade spoke of a "path of devastation" about 100 meters wide.
Several houses were badly damaged, trees fell and cars were buried under them.
According to the fire brigade, there were no injuries.
Trees fall on house
The Berlin fire brigade declared a state of emergency.
There have been dozen weather-related missions since the morning.
In Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, two trees about 15 meters high fell on a car and a four-story apartment building.
Nobody was injured.
In the Bad Godesberg district of Bonn, a freight train collided with a fallen branch on the track during the night.
Friedhart Knolle from the Harz National Park warned tourists: “Going into the forest now is absolutely irresponsible.
Even if the storm has subsided, trees can still fall over at any time. «On Wednesday there was already irresponsible behavior on the Brocken, according to Knolle.
Pictures from the summit showed children who were whirling around there and could no longer hold themselves, as well as adults with prams.
In a strip across the middle to the east and northeast of Germany, the German Weather Service (DWD) had assumed heavy gusts of wind and sometimes gale-force gusts of up to 105 kilometers per hour.
Hurricane gusts of up to 120 kilometers per hour were expected in the mountains.
According to the DWD, stormy gusts, showers and thunderstorms are still possible in the north on Friday, while the weather otherwise calms down.
In the south it is then longer sunny in a wide strip from the Black Forest to Eastern Bavaria.
The maximum values are between 8 and 13 degrees.
It's getting cooler than the days before.
ptz / dpa / AFP