Some men from Lenggries recently helped repair the flood damage in Rhineland-Palatinate.
What they experienced on site moved them.
Lenggries
- The shock of the flood disaster in western Germany was and is great - but also the willingness to help.
Spontaneously, some Lenggries people decided to lend a hand and made a short-term trip to the community of Dernau in the particularly affected Ahr valley in Rhineland-Palatinate.
There were Matthias Haslinger, Johann Merk, Karl Murböck sen., Stefan Murböck, Franz Ortlieb, Peter Öttl, Thomas Stöckl, Andreas Stöckner and Hans Willibald, Martin Willibald and Benedikt Leichmann.
In an interview with the Tölzer Kurier, the 35-year-old commander of the Wegscheid fire brigade reports on the impressions of the helpers.
Mr. Leichmann, what was the picture for the Lenggries helpers in Dernau?
The picture was staggering.
We were prepared for the fact that it was bad, but when you drive into the valley, the impression is completely different from what is conveyed in pictures and video recordings, also because you face the people there personally.
That can hardly be described in words.
Destroyed houses, houses that no longer exist, heaps of bulky rubbish on the streets from the full refrigerator to oil tanks, glass wool, everything you can imagine.
In addition, there is a lot of mud.
It's in every crack, on all walls and ceilings - and there is everything in it, faeces, heating oil, diesel, paint ... Of the whole valley, which stretches over 50 kilometers, we only saw three kilometers.
Where do you start to help?
You start in the middle because you don't know where the front and back are. We had a contact person on site who we had contact with on Sunday afternoon. We left Lenggries on Sunday at midnight and arrived in Dernau on Monday at 10 a.m. Our contact person received us and instructed us on a section of the route. That was all still in the initial chaos, there was no such thing as an operational command. So we just started with the first house. Later, Franz Ortlieb and Karl Murböck were our vanguard and looked where we would be needed next. We have taken on the job of clearing the entrances to the houses with our machines. We had two mini excavators, two wheel loaders, a track dumper and a timber truck with a crane, three power generators and a pump.After that, other helpers came, making human chains with buckets in hand to carry away the mud.
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The machines and equipment they brought with them, such as mini excavators, were used by the troop from the Isarwinkel to clear away vast amounts of mud and bulky waste and to clear access to houses.
© Leichmann
So you had the right equipment with you with your machines?
Yes, the big machines were also important so that you could clear away all the mud and bulky waste.
Did the local people record your presence?
Absolutely positive and super friendly.
It is really admirable the energy and the cohesion with which they went to work and said: “We won't let us get us down.
We are still fine, we have 'only' lost our house, others have died. ”I had the feeling that our presence and the great solidarity in general helped them.
But there are sure to be the quiet and sad moments too.
Yes, definitely.
And each of us also had these moments when you talked to people in the evening and heard their individual stories.
People told us how they had spent hours or all night on roofs without knowing what was going to happen next.
You start to wonder.
Then you see again that you are busy and that your work is moving forward.
I also fear that the media hole will still follow, and that the flood disaster will no longer be so in the foreground after a few months or years.
But we mustn't forget these people.
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Several small excavators and other equipment from the Isarwinkel in the disaster area.
© Leichmann
What are your impressions of your assignment?
Very positive.
We didn't know each other, and yet everyone pulled together.
If you needed help, you could always wave to someone.
We started the journey home with one laughing and one crying eye.
We were able to help - but we could have continued for a long time, the work there is far from over.
But you could make a difference.
Yes of course.
And things have also changed in Lenggries and in the southern district, because the community here started the “Lenggries helps” fundraising campaign.
We hadn't thought that far ourselves, but it's nice that we have created a reference point to the flood area and that people know that every cent of their donations goes directly to the flood victims.
Did you still have personal connections to Dernau?
We didn't exchange addresses directly, but we made a note of a few places in houses where we might want to look again next year.
Donation
account of the community of Lenggries:
IBAN DE06701695980005715008;
BIC: GENODEF1MIB;
Purpose "Lenggries helps".
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