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Lewentz next to Prime Minister Dreyer: "Had no comprehensive picture of the situation".
Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / dpa
In the end, things happened very quickly - so quickly that Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) was not even able to name a successor for her most important minister.
On this Wednesday afternoon, the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of the Interior, Roger Lewentz, was to explain to the state parliament in Mainz why he did not recognize the situation during the devastating flood disaster last year in good time and immediately did everything possible to save human lives.
Lewentz (SPD) obviously came to the only correct conclusion that it cannot be explained – and with his resignation in the morning he drew the necessary conclusion.
183 people died on July 14, 2021 from the flood last year, 134 of them in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ahr Valley alone.
Lewentz was there on the evening of the disaster, he visited the headquarters of the municipal operations center in the Ahrweiler district and found that the people there, who mostly worked on a voluntary basis, had the situation under control.
For him it seemed like a big and strong, but not entirely unusual flood.
He later defended himself that he had no idea that there was a catastrophe that would endanger the lives of thousands of people.
He had "no comprehensive picture of the situation".
Videos from the flood night
This explanation has become increasingly questionable in recent days.
Video recordings that were made from a police helicopter on the night of the flood appeared first.
You can see a completely unleashed river, whose raging current washes houses up to the edge of the roof.
You see people on garage roofs or in skylight openings waving desperately or sending SOS signals with flashlights.
These videos had been in the archives of the Rhineland-Palatinate police for over a year and were gathering dust unnoticed.
Neither the public prosecutor's office, which is investigating possible misconduct during the night of the flood, nor the state parliament's investigative committee, which is also doing the same, knew about it.
When the pictures were discovered by accident at the end of September and shown to the committee, Lewentz said he had just seen them for the first time.
collapsed houses
That wasn't convincing, especially since there were also photos from the helicopter that were sent to the police operations center after landing.
And, as is now known, there was also a summary report from the crew that revealed the dramatic situation.
The situation center in Lewentz' ministry knew this report and also knew about collapsed houses in the Ahr community.
There were reports of a dramatic helicopter rescue operation at a campsite, of people missing, of a mayor seeing cars swimming past her town hall.
It didn't take much imagination to see the seriousness of the situation.
With his resignation, he assumes political responsibility for "mistakes that were made in my area of responsibility," says Lewentz.
You can and should expect that from a minister.
In fact, this resignation is also an attempt to reduce the enormous pressure on the entire state government of his boss Malu Dreyer.
Because the investigative committee of the state parliament in Mainz has already shown with a number of examples that the disaster management of the Dreyer government was lacking in several places.
The Environment Minister at the time, Anne Spiegel (Green Party) and her State Secretary Erwin Manz negligently underestimated the situation and, for example, issued a reassuring press statement (there was “no extreme flood risk”).
Your own authority had long ago forecast water levels that were several meters higher than the previous “flood of the century” on the Ahr.
Manz, who, unlike Spiegel, is still in office, did not consider it necessary to correct this false report despite the dramatic news that evening.
In addition, the two ministers responsible for flood protection and disaster control, Spiegel and Lewentz, obviously did not speak to each other on the night of the flood.
Lewentz held a strong position in Dreyer's cabinet.
After the resignation of Prime Minister Kurt Beck ten years ago, he was considered one of the possible successors.
But he submitted without a murmur when Malu Dreyer won the race.
And since then he has loyally backed her as SPD state chairman.
He has once again demonstrated this loyalty to his boss with his resignation.
He should initially give Dreyer a little breathing room.
At least until they pointed out the next serious mistake their government was responsible for on the night of the flood.