Condolences on the flood disaster

The pictures and films in the media are terrible. It hits so close because the rubble is not from the 40s, nor are the scenes from the 60s, and we are all somehow neighbors.

There are certainly some among us who are currently fearing for their house and yard or even their lives. Whether it is their new or old house, whether it is the apartment, home, or family… I wish them strength, courage, and much luck - that you all get through this safely. Somehow I am at a loss for words. Every hour more terrible news comes… :(

We were at our supermarket in Rheinbach today (we always drive there from Bonn). Rheinbach was also quite badly affected.
This is a huge store, they really have everything. Huge. Practically a consumer temple.
Feels like kilometers of refrigerated shelves.
Everything, really everything was empty! There was nothing that had to be refrigerated. We then found out that the power had gone out on Wednesday because of flooding. They had to throw everything out of the refrigerators and were only able to open again today.

It’s really terrible. We are right near Altenahr, Euskirchen, Swistal, and the like.
On Thursday from about 1:00 pm to 8:30 pm we were busy trying to save the garden and garage, or rather taking measures so that the terrace would not be flooded and the water would not flow into the house.
This is what it looked like here in the afternoon. And the water kept rising:

Around 5:00 pm the water was about 25 cm high at the garage door.
And we live on the hill! That was just rain, no stream, no pond. Nothing like that.

At first we tried to fight it with a wet vacuum. No chance. The water rose even while vacuuming. Then at 5:30 pm I went to the hardware store and bought a pump. It gave out at 7:30 pm. At 7:50 pm I was back at the hardware store and all pumps were gone.
There was only a display pump left, which was also incomplete. The poor salesperson went through three (!) departments and MacGyver-style put the thing together for me.
At 8:30 pm I then connected this “new” pump.
The rain eased off and in the end everything turned out well.

I have never experienced anything like this in my 43 years.
At that time, we still had no idea what was happening around Bonn…
It was terrible for us. For the first time I felt what it means when people say that nature is a force against which there is no defense.

Now we are just humble, shaken, and speechless when you see what has happened to so many people…
There are no words.

These are truly shocking images from the flood-affected areas... The poor victims touch my heart. In the medium term, it will probably be unavoidable to remove areas highly prone to flooding from development plans and to abandon these districts; climate change will make this necessary. I have found it insane for years how former floodplain areas and classic alluvial land as well as riverbank areas have been rezoned into commercial and building land. It’s not any better in our CH. Areas vulnerable to mudslides and known as 'wandering' slopes have also been wildly built over. In Germany and Belgium, this is now costing people their lives and livelihoods! How wonderful that our billionaires are building rockets to open up space tourism - that will definitely (!) stop climate change (warning irony).

My family lives in the region but was lucky because the rainfall in their small area was not so severe, so the local stream did not move out of its bed. But of course, everyone knows the affected villages since they have driven through most of them often. Many of the affected villages have been settled there for hundreds of years, so the disaster could not have been avoided by construction measures. But I want to show these pictures to all those who seal their new building plots to the maximum, even beyond the floor area ratio, and prefer to build a 280 sqm bungalow instead of a two-story house.

I only insured my residential building and household contents against something like this yesterday, everything is always extra, before they always talk about the "overall package".....

It's already a sad situation... but I see the whole world as sad, just how many people die from famine and we throw away tons of food.

Fingers crossed for everyone!!!

We also have family "down there," but fortunately they are not affected. My brother-in-law and his son are now continuously on duty with the THW. This is really unimaginable and totally inconceivable. Everyone here is lying in the sun...