Hurricane »Zeynep«: what Germany still has to do

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Erzgebirge railway line Chemnitz - Cranzahl: fire brigade eliminates storm damage

Photo: B&S/Bernd March / imago images/Bernd March

At the start of the weekend, »Zeynep« caused storm surges, accidents and disruptions to rail traffic.

At least three people died because of the hurricane low.

The fire brigades counted thousands of operations, mostly because of fallen trees, objects flying around or damaged buildings - in North Rhine-Westphalia alone they deployed more than 12,000 operations by Saturday noon.

According to an initial estimate, »Zeynep« caused insured losses of more than 900 million euros.

The storm was the most intense since "Kyrill" in 2007, said management consultancy Meyerthole Siems Kohlruss (MSK), which specializes in actuarial mathematics.

The overall damage caused by storms is generally higher, sometimes quite significantly.

One of the at least three storm fatalities was a 17-year-old who died in Hopsten (NRW) as a passenger.

According to the police, the driver of the car may have avoided a branch and thus left the roadway.

According to the police, a 56-year-old driver died near Altenberge in North Rhine-Westphalia when he crashed his car into a tree lying across the road.

A man died in an accident in the Lower Saxony municipality of Wurster Nordseekueste when he tried to repair the damaged roof of a stable during the storm.

According to the police, the 68-year-old broke through the roof and fell about ten meters down.

Because of the storm, train traffic was partially stopped on Friday, the failures continued on Saturday.

"Due to storm damage, there will be delays and cancellations in northern Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia until at least Monday afternoon," said Deutsche Bahn in the afternoon.

The company called for travel to and from Hamburg and Bremen to be avoided.

Accordingly, no long-distance trains should run north of Dortmund, Hanover and Berlin until at least 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Until then, ICE trains on the Cologne - Hanover - Berlin route should also be canceled, as should ICE trains between Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and Berlin.

On Saturday the wind weakened somewhat, but there were still gusts of wind, especially in the north.

According to the German Weather Service (DWD), on Sunday there should initially be strong to stormy gusts in the lowlands.

The weather is not expected to calm down until Tuesday

"It could get really turbulent and sometimes dangerous on Monday night," said Adrian Leyser from the DWD's weather forecasting center about the approaching storm "Antonia".

Heavy gusts of wind or hurricane-force gusts cannot be ruled out.

"The trees, which were already affected by the previous storms and are standing in partially heavily softened soil, can easily fall over," said Leyser.

The weather is not expected to calm down until Tuesday.

"Zeynep" had crossed Germany from Friday afternoon with wind speeds of locally more than 160 kilometers per hour.

The highest value was measured on Saturday night at around 162 kilometers per hour at the "Alte Weser" North Sea lighthouse, as reported by the DWD.

In Hamburg, for the first time since 2013, there was a very severe storm surge with more than 3.5 meters above the mean high water on Saturday morning.

The Elbe reached around 5.30 a.m. at the St. Pauli level, according to the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) 3.75 meters above the mean high water level.

Firefighters rescued two men who were trapped in the water with their car in the Speicherstadt with a rubber dinghy.

According to the police, the men were severely hypothermic.

After the water dropped in the morning, the evening high tide is expected to bring another storm surge.

In Bremen, a 55-meter construction crane fell into an office building that was still under construction.

"It looks devastating," said a fire department spokesman.

A passing truck was also caught by the crane on Saturday night.

The driver was unharmed.

In Hamburg, parts of the facade of a four-storey residential building collapsed.

In Bad Zwischenahn (Lower Saxony), a spruce tree around nine meters high fell on a clinic building.

According to the fire department, 17 patients housed there were brought to safety.

According to the information, no one was injured.

In Gronau near Hildesheim (Lower Saxony), the storm blew a copper plate weighing around 80 kilograms from a church tower.

A spokesman for the fire brigade said it struck a house about 80 meters further.

A few kilometers away, on the Autobahn 7 near Hildesheim, according to the police, a traffic sign fell on the road because of the storm on Friday evening.

A semi-trailer truck driver was no longer able to avoid it and drove over the obstacles.

The tank ruptured and 400 liters of diesel spilled over the road.

In Thuringia, »Zeynep« overthrew what was, according to local information, the highest post windmill in Germany (438 meters above sea level).

The North Sea island of Wangerooge lost about 90 percent of its beach in the storm.

The beach was also damaged on the East Frisian island of Langeoog.

"In parts there is no longer a beach, the edge goes down to the dunes," said the island's mayor, Heike Horn.

"Zeynep" was the second hurricane within a few days.

Previously, "Ylenia" had led to thousands of operations from Wednesday evening.

At least three drivers in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt died in weather-related accidents.

wit/dpa