The first helpers have returned home.
Eight members of the Planegger fire brigade came back to the Würmtal from the flood region in Rhineland-Palatinate on Wednesday night.
They replaced their comrades after six and a half days of deployment in the Ahr Valley.
Planegg
- On Wednesday morning, Bernd Budau is already back at work. The deputy commander is one of the six men and two women that the Planegger Wehr sent to the disaster area together with a fire truck and a roll-off truck with a decontamination container. All of them volunteers with understanding employers.
The Planeggers and ten other people from the Munich district were part of the Bavarian oil weir contingent, which removes contamination in the damaged area, in particular from leaking heating oil or fuels.
Because their decontamination container is designed for this, they were responsible, among other things, for cleaning the firefighter's clothing.
They made sure that oily deposits and other items were removed from the suits so that they could be used again the next day.
“Mud and mud everywhere.
You stand in the dirt up to the middle of your shin, ”says Budau.
If the root brush was not enough, a high-pressure cleaner was used.
Cleaning line built
"The situation on site turned out differently than expected," said Budau. Because the disaster relief base camp at the Nürburgring is well equipped with showers, “a rough cleaning on site was sufficient. The container was not fully operated. ”Instead, there was a“ somewhat reduced cleaning line ”. That left capacity to help. Together with the Passau fire brigade, the Planeggers, who drove daily from the tent city at the Nürburgring to Dernau, 40 minutes away, freed cellars of heating oil. Because oil is lighter than water, the tanks were flooded when the flood penetrated. When the tide receded, they sank to the ground and overturned: the oil ran out. Budau and his comrades went from house to house to suck up oil. The Bavarian oil weir contingent pumped out 230,000 liters of oil / water mixture every day.
“There are no doorbells, no front doors, nothing,” says Budau. "The degree of destruction is unimaginable." The Planegger fire brigade helps time and again in disasters, during the Oder flood in Dessau in 1997, when the couple flooded Baar-Ebenhausen in the Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm district, or during the snow chaos in southern Upper Bavaria in 2019. Dernau was a new dimension. “When we drove to the Ahr Valley for the first time, we were all speechless. Everyone was prepared for it, but seeing it with your own eyes was something else entirely. The forces that worked cannot be described, ”says Budau. The “Bächlein Ahr” had become a raging river, which tore away entire stone bridges, snipped off tracks like matches and turned rows of houses into ruins. "An unimaginable scenario."
"Listening, encouragement, giving confidence"
While the Planeggers took care of the heating oil, they automatically came into contact with the citizens, with people who are left with nothing.
Like the older lady, "who only owned what she was wearing".
Even if there are many pastors and psychologists who take care of the victims of the flood, the need to talk was there.
Budau: “We listened.
Many are already helped when they have a contact person.
Listening, encouragement, giving confidence. ”They were often asked where they came from.
The fact that people from the Munich district come to support them have created “big eyes” and gratitude.
"The willingness to help is very great, that gives people confidence."
The forces come from all over Germany, from the north to the deepest south, from east and west.
Budau was impressed that the Hamburg water company in Dernau was busy restoring the water supply.
When the Planeggers left, individual buildings had tap water again.
“But there is no hydrant network yet.” It takes 20 minutes to drive to the next hydrant.
Twice a day, the Planeggers fetched 2000 liters of service water from there with their fire truck.
The days were long and exhausting, both physically and mentally.
In the evening we sat together briefly to exchange ideas and process what we had experienced.
There were 13 hours of work behind the Planeggians.
Camp beds in large tents
Like the other helpers, they slept on camp beds in large tents, with heating from day two, because the nights were quite cold with ten degrees.
We woke up at 6.30 a.m., followed by a briefing and the obligatory Corona rapid test after breakfast.
All eight Planeggers already have full vaccination protection.
For Budau it has been proven that firefighters have a higher priority in the vaccination sequence due to their commitment.
At 8 a.m. the fire truck, which has nine seats, left.
The hookloader stayed in Dernau the entire time.
Work started at 9 o'clock.
There were two supply points in Dernau, a food truck and a kitchen set up provisionally by the community in a winery, in which a trained cook prepared “really great things”.
Last left in the evening
Because they gave the other forces the opportunity to clean themselves after the mission, the Planeggers were the last to leave Dernau, mostly around 7.30 p.m.
After a short dinner and conversation, they fell broken on their cot.
Dernau, so Budau, looks different now than at the beginning of the mission last week.
“An insane number of wheel loaders and excavators” would have disposed of hundreds of tons of rubble and rubbish.
There is now also a makeshift bridge over the Ahr.
Installed by the Bundeswehr last Sunday, it was opened to traffic on Mondays.
Until then, a small part of the village was inaccessible without an all-terrain vehicle that can cross the river.
“The commitment of our team continues,” says Budau. The seven-man replacement set off in Planegg on Tuesday at 6 a.m. The handover took place on site in the afternoon, then the six men and two women of the first group made their six-hour journey home. Your comrades are expected back tomorrow, Friday. For the Dernauer, the clean-up and repair work will go on for a long time. Budau: "I assume that it will take years."
