Lewentz: Always available during the night of the flood

Created: 09/23/2022, 20:07

Roger Lewentz (SPD), Interior Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate.

© Arne Dedert/dpa/archive image

In his own words, Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) was “continuously available and approachable” by telephone on the night of the flood disaster in northern Rhineland-Palatinate.

"I was by no means, as was slanderously claimed, eating schnitzel," said Lewentz on Friday before the investigative committee of the state parliament.

During his visit to the operations center of the Ahrweiler district on April 14.

Mainz – July at 7.20 p.m. he was informed about the situation on the Ahr.

He had assumed that he was dealing with a functioning unit staffed by specialists who could carry out their tasks in a structured manner.

"When I was there, neither management nor staff seemed overwhelmed," said Lewentz.

At 7.45 p.m. he was said goodbye to the then District Administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU).

Then he went home to his private office to be "centrally accessible".

There was no talk of flood or flash flood at that time.

Around 11:00 p.m. he first received the message that six houses in the Ahr village of Schuld had collapsed.

For the first time, there was talk of missing people and possibly even death, said the minister.

There were also reports of districts in the Eifel and in the city of Trier that were also affected by heavy rain, where the situation also appeared very dangerous.

However, he knew that the emergency services were on the move and would be supported as best they could by the Supervisory and Service Directorate (ADD) subordinate to his ministry.

Lewentz repeatedly emphasized that there was no overall picture of the situation at that time, but rather reports on individual events in several districts.

dpa