Germany’s Floods Caused By ‘monumental failure of the warning system’
The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river. Over the next few days a team of scientists sent the German authorities a series of forecasts so accurate that they now read like a macabre prophecy: the Rhineland was about to be hit by “extreme” flooding, particularly along the Erft and Ahr rivers, and in towns such as Hagen and Altena.
Yet despite at least 24 hours’ warning that predicted, almost precisely, which districts would be worst afflicted when the rains came, the flood still caught many of its victims largely unawares.
Image: LINO MIRGELER / DPA / AP
Germany got its preparations “badly wrong”, one of the experts who built Europe’s sophisticated flood prediction model told The Sunday Times. Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at Reading University, said that a “monumental failure of the system” had led to one of postwar Germany’s deadliest natural disasters, which had by last night claimed at least 133 lives since Wednesday and left hundreds of people unaccounted for. At least another 24 people were dead across the border in Belgium, a figure that the country’s national crisis centre expected to rise, while the rains forced thousands from their homes in the Netherlands.
On Tuesday and Wednesday parts of Germany were deluged with more than a month’s worth of rain in 48 hours. Some tributaries of the Rhine swelled to record levels, turning cities into lakes of mud, sweeping away buildings and bridges, and drowning dozens of people in their homes.
“When I woke up [on Thursday] morning and saw how many people had died, I just thought: you can do better than this,” said Cloke. “I’m disappointed that particularly in the cities you had people washed away. That suggests that lots of things are going badly wrong. People should have been receiving warnings; people should have understood the warnings. It’s no use having massive computer models predicting what’s going to happen if people don’t know what to do in a flood.”
Instead, the overwhelming majority of people in the path of the floods carried on with their everyday lives, oblivious to the danger, as the waters began to rise.
The German government is now facing questions about how many lives might have been saved had it evacuated the danger zones in time and properly conveyed the gravity of the impending crisis to the public. As Bild, the country’s bestselling newspaper, put it: “Did our disaster protection agency fail?”
In the early 2000s Cloke and two of her colleagues designed the European Flood Awareness System (Efas) with a disaster such as this in mind. After the cataclysmic floods across central and eastern Europe in 2002, which claimed at least 110 lives in nine countries, they resolved that, next time, the victims had to be forearmed. “Given the number of deaths and the amount of damage, we had the idea that we should never allow this to happen again,” Cloke said.
The algorithms combine observations from the European Union’s Copernicus satellites with hydrographical records and readings of river levels in order to give national agencies up to ten days to prepare for the worst.
In 2014 alerts and maps from Efas allowed the authorities in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to fine-tune their response to colossal flooding in the Balkans. This time, however, Efas found itself playing the role of Cassandra.
It raised the alarm on July 10 — four days before the first floods — with warnings to the German and Belgian governments about the high risk of flooding in the Rhine and Meuse basins.
Over the next few days it produced minutely detailed charts correctly predicting most of the areas that would suffer the heaviest damage. Its German partner agency requested specific analysis of several rivers including the Ahr, along whose banks at least 93 people later died and 618 were injured.
Cloke said that some of the flash flooding would have been tricky to forecast in detail but there was “certainly time” to prepare larger towns and cities with warnings or evacuations.
“The fact that people didn’t evacuate or get the warnings suggests that something is going wrong,” Cloke said. “If you’ve got some information about what risk you’re at and you can understand it, you can take action to protect yourself. These floods were huge. Probably they were like a fantasy or a kind of science-fiction movie for people.”
One underlying problem is the parlous state of Germany’s alarm systems. Last September the BBK held a national “warning day”, when people across the country were supposed to be simultaneously deafened by sirens and inundated with alert messages in a simulated natural disaster.
It was a debacle: most of the technology didn’t work.
As is often the case with this sort of devastating flooding, the crucial factor was that the weather systems got stuck in one place.
There appears to be a distinct lack of information available as to the amounts of rain that actually fell. The only reference I can find is from The Weather Channel:
Link to The Weather Channel here: weather.com
Although this was extreme, such amounts are not unusual:
Link for the image above: wunderground.com
And though rare, such destructive floods have occurred in the past in Germany, such as in 1501, 1784 and 1845:
Link for the image above: second.wiki
In my view, the authorities in Germany have been spending too much time playing as climate activists, and not enough doing their proper job.
UPDATE
This post originally incorrectly included a Weather Underground report of floods in July 2014.
UPDATE II
No Tricks Zone also reveals how German authorities dangerously allowed dams to remain full, despite plenty of warnings of wet weather.
Now, to hide their guilt, they are attempting to deflect attention away by blaming ‘climate change’.
Link for the article above: notrickszone.com
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sir_isO
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How do you expect a functional “warning system” when those sort of events are engineered and intentional?
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sir_isO
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You know it’s like the engineered food shortages.
“Oh no, we forgot to tell you? There’s no food to buy.
Just ignore that it’s intentionally left to rot in storage/stockpiles. Shit, even prior to this covid crap, there was enough food wasted in storage/stockpiling, on a consistent basis, to feed an additional 12.5 billion people. Much more wasted now though! Good times. We’re good at being philanthropists. Trust us.
So you see, that’s why you need to let us take care and fix the agricultural problems with our specific homogenized gmo and toxic shit.
And that’s why being a climate scientologist is almost like being Jesus, but even more better”
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dnomsed
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When a nation, or region, loses its moral compass and turns its back on its Creator, divine judgement often follows… It is a sad sign of our times. It is the national consequence of the divine order.
When a nation is listening, early warnings may be received, which are then acted upon, and disaster averted. When a nation refuses to listen, it then it brings the consequences upon itself.
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dnomsed
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When a nation, or region, loses its moral compass and turns its back on its Creator, divine judgement often follows… It is a sad sign of our times. It is the natural consequence of the divine order.
When a nation is listening, early warnings may be received, which are then acted upon, and disaster averted. When a nation refuses to listen, it then it brings the consequences upon itself.
Reply
Laurie
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6 For He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth’;
Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength. …
10 By the breath of God ice is given,
And the broad waters are frozen.
11 Also with moisture He saturates the thick clouds;
He scatters His bright clouds.
12 And they swirl about, being turned by His guidance,
That they may do whatever He commands them
On the face of the whole earth.
13 He causes it to come,
Whether for correction,
Or for His land,
Or for mercy. Job 37
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dnomsed
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^ Amen…
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Denis dombas
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Globalists in action again.Harrp is in use since 60’s and very much improved by now.
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Artelia
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A lot of farmland is not properly cared for because the organic and biodynamic principles of caring for the soil and increasing humus in the soil are not followed. THIS leads to soil erosion, the excessive silting of rivers and estuaries, landslides, water run off and land which is unable to absorb water. Of course this will lead to flooding. Towns and cities which lack gardens, parks , trees and grass verges also create more flooding as the rain cannot sink into the soil. Taking care of our soil and having small and larger green spaces
in towns and cities helps to mitigate flooding and an also mitigates drought. Soils rich in humus retain moisture for longer than dead soil and they recover more quickly after severe drought. Drainage ditches around fields are essential for excessive rain but they also help the soil in the drier weather. We need water to drain from roads and our roofs into the soil in underground water sumps instead of directly to rivers and to the sea. Gardens with hedges, trees, shrubs, a lawn, vegetable and flower beds are good for the environment. Very large patios and drives, without these plants and without soil leaves nowhere for water to go to.
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