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After the flood, passers-by walk through the destroyed city center of Bad Münstereifel
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the opposition has asked for a comprehensive look into the telephone data of all ministers during the flood disaster in order to reconstruct the crisis management. All legal and technical possibilities would have to be seized to secure the connection data of the cabinet members from July 9th to 16th, said the SPD parliamentary group vice André Stinka of the "Rheinische Post" from Düsseldorf on Monday. This included calls, e-mails, SMS or messages via messenger services.
"We have to be able to retrace exactly how the state government's crisis management went and what failures there were," said Stinka of the newspaper.
Previously, a report in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" stated that State Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser could no longer reconstruct when she first spoke to Prime Minister Armin Laschet (both CDU) about the disaster.
According to the newspaper, the Green parliamentary group leader Verena Schäffer sharply criticized North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU).
Reul's responses to the disaster showed "how uninformed and lacking in concept the interior minister is positioned in the field of civil protection."
In view of the "danger to life and limb" from possible catastrophes, this is "frightening".
"Less for operational reasons than for symbolic reasons"
Laschet failed to set up a crisis team. "If I had to make another decision, I would recommend activating the crisis team to the Prime Minister," Reul had said, looking back on the flood disaster. “But less for operational reasons than for symbolic reasons.” He believes that no house would have collapsed less and no human life would have been saved as a result. But in Reul's words, such a crisis team would have “sent the signal to the population: 'Now it's serious! And we take it seriously too. ‹«
In North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, extreme heavy rain triggered devastating floods in mid-July.
Many communities were devastated.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, 133 people were killed in connection with the flood.
Eight other dead people found had died before the flood, according to the state operations management.
There were 48 deaths in North Rhine-Westphalia.
mrc / AFP
