A 20-person task force, consisting of members from various district fire brigades, made its way to the flood region of Ahrweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate yesterday.
Their mission: to support the so-called oil weir contingent on site with personnel and vehicles.
Dachau - Although the water has disappeared from the streets, the clean-up work in the flood regions of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate is in full swing.
But one of the worst consequences of the recent flood disaster is taking place underground.
In the cellars, to be precise.
Because in many houses a red-brownish shimmering broth - a mixture of water, mud and heating oil - wafts through the basement.
The broth not only smells like being in a gas station, but it also attacks the brickwork of the houses.
Specialist companies can extract the oil, but it would take years for the few specialists to clean the many houses in the areas affected by the flood disaster.
And this is where the Dachau district comes into play.
The Free State had offered its help to the flood regions, and the Würzburg fire brigade school has been responsible for the so-called Bavarian oil brigade contingent for days.
And in order to be able to equip this contingent with man and equipment, the government of Upper Bavaria sent a request for help to the Dachau District Fire Brigade Association on Tuesday.
The destination is the community of Dernau in the Ahrweiler district
District fire inspector Maximilian Reimoser answered the phone immediately, within a few hours he had a 20-person team set up that went to his place of work, the community of Dernau in the Ahrweiler district, on Wednesday. From Thursday to Sunday, the team will help with the oil rescue service there; then there will be a shift change and 20 more district firefighters will be on duty from Monday through Wednesday; the last group will then be on duty until Sunday, August 15th.
According to Reimoser, the colleagues will spend the night at the Nürburgring.
However, since this is a disaster, the volunteer workers will continue to receive wages.
According to Reimoser, this will first be put forward by the district of Dachau and then sent an invoice to the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
“We solve this in a very unbureaucratic way,” says Reimoser, who is currently coordinating the deployment far from home from Dachau.
The job of the Dachau residents on site: They are supposed to pump the water-oil-sludge mixture into containers and then drive these containers to the separation plant provided by the THW Cuxhafen;
this machine separates the oil from the water.
They also secure heating oil tanks that have been damaged by the flood but have not yet leaked.
According to Reimoser, there are forces from Dachau, Hebertshausen, Indersdorf, Altomünster and Petershausen in the first district helper contingent, which left for Dernau on Wednesday.
Another team from Vierkirchen made its way to Aachen at the same time to help out the people there with construction dryers (see box).
The first deployment in another federal state since 2002
While the teams change every three days, the vehicles from the district will remain on site until mid-August.
The district of Dachau sent the emergency services on Wednesday with a so-called swap truck, a command vehicle and a command vehicle.
The Altomünster fire brigade made their decontamination vehicle available: the emergency services should be able to clean themselves in it after their work in the basement.
There was also a team transporter from Wollomoos, a fire fighting group vehicle from Petershausen and a trailer from Dachau for the generator sets required on site.
For Reimoser, the assignment is the first since 2002 "in which we were on the move beyond our federal state".
Back then, the people of Dachau helped after the catastrophic Elbe flood in the Anhalt-Bitterfeld district.
