Landslide in Erftstadt: Pinkwart rejects allegations

Created: 2022-02-08 17:14

The area between the gravel pit and the buildings in the district of Blessem still shows traces of the flood disaster.

© Henning Kaiser/dpa

After the Erftstadt-Blessem landslide, Economics Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) emphasized that before the flood disaster of July 2021, his ministry had no knowledge of deficiencies in the flood protection facilities there.

After the event, however, they "acted immediately," said Pinkwart on Tuesday in Düsseldorf.

In the July flood, the area around a gravel pit had subsided, and several houses collapsed.

Düsseldorf - The opposition SPD and the Greens now want to take a close look at the role of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in a committee of inquiry.

The opposition's request for a special session of the committee was made against the background of long-known investigations by the public prosecutor's office against the owner and lessor of the Erftstadt opencast mine, against five suspects of the operator and four suspects from the Arnsberg district government, which as the responsible supervisory and licensing authority is the Ministry of Economics is subordinate.

Pinkwart said on Tuesday that his ministry had always informed the state parliament "timely and comprehensively", for example in a report to the state parliament on September 1 and in several written answers to parliamentary questions.

"The facts were also named and discussed that raised doubts about the proper condition of the flood protection system at the time of the flood disaster."

At the weekend, Westdeutscher Rundfunk quoted from two internal reports by the district government, in which the lack of flood protection was named as the reason for the accident.

According to the report, in 2015 the flood protection wall on the south side of the gravel pit was nevertheless accepted by the authorities as free of defects.

The ministry did not know a final version of one of the reports mentioned in the TV report, and the other report was not known at all, said Pinkwart.

"We ask the city of Erftstadt to make this report available to us."

more on the subject

SPD leader Kuchaty: Faster payment of flood aid

Baldauf wants to bring the CDU back to its old strength

Spiegel wants to testify in the investigative committee about the flood

Storms with extreme rainfall triggered a flood disaster in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia in July.

Whole areas were devastated by the water masses, dozens of people died.

In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, damage was estimated at 13 billion euros.

dpa