German workers race to provide aid, Covid-19 vaccines in flood areas in bid to prevent health emergency
- Last week’s deadly freak floods wrecked basic services in the Ahrweiler district, leaving residents knee-deep in debris and without sewage or drinking water
- If the clean-up operation does not move swiftly ahead, more disease will come in the floods’ wake, just as many had come to believe Covid-19 was nearly beaten
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Last week’s freak floods killed more than 160 people, and wrecked basic services in the hilly villages of the Ahrweiler district, leaving thousands of residents knee-deep in debris and without sewage or drinking water.
“We have no water, we have no electricity, we have no gas. The toilet can’t be flushed,” said Ursula Schuch. “Nothing is working. You can’t shower … I am nearly 80 years old and I have never experienced anything like it.”
In the village of Dernau, Allemagne, 39-year-old mother Carina Dewald said she lost everything when floods ravaged the area.
The petrol station where she worked as a manager with her husband was razed to the ground, and her house was left uninhabitable as waters from the river Ahr rose to the window ledges on the first floor.
“I think we’ll be able to go back to our house, but right now I’m taking each day as it comes,” she said amid the piles of rubble that used to be her street.
In the meantime, “I am technically homeless and unemployed”, she said.
She and her family are now living in a nearby apartment provided by her father-in-law, spared by the floods but still without water or electricity.
A sense of disbelief is felt widely among residents and aid workers coming to terms with the chaos caused by the floods.
Everything has been destroyed by the water. But not the damn virus
Few recovery workers are able to take the kind of anti-infection precautions that are possible in more ordered circumstances, so mobile vaccination plans have come to the region.
“Everything has been destroyed by the water. But not the damn virus,” said Olav Kullak, head of vaccine coordination in the region.
“And since the people now have to work side by side and have no chance of obeying any corona rules, we at least have to try to give them the best protection via vaccination.”
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The people of Dernau, a village of 1,800 residents nestled in the wine-growing hills of the Ahrweiler region, fear it could be months before life starts to return to normal.
Roads have been torn up and bridges destroyed, with some parts of the valley only accessible by air.
“The village will not recover,” said one vineyard owner after losing an entire cellar full of wine.
Peter Schnitzler, 55, the manager and head chef of a local family-run hotel, is also fearful about the future. “I don’t think I’ll be able to reopen the hotel,” he said.
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With shops destroyed and cars swept away by the floods, many villagers have had to rely on volunteers to provide basic food, cook hot meals and deliver mattresses, torches and generators.
Stage technician Timo Tillmann, 31, drove 250km (155 miles) from Osnabreuck to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler and has been touring the town with a van full of rice, pasta, plastic cutlery, T-shirts, toothpaste and diapers picked up from a nearby warehouse.
“Do you have anything sweet?” asks a young woman, visibly exhausted, her clothes smeared with mud.
The nearby Nuerburgring racetrack has become a makeshift aid centre the size of three football pitches storing donated clothes, toiletries and food.
The THW federal volunteer agency has set up a water purification plant in the car park of a hospital, pumping out 30,000 litres (6,600 gallons) of drinking water per hour.
With some growing desperate, police in Koblenz had warned residents on Monday to “not use the water from the Ahr as drinking water or for washing clothes”.
