Guwahati News Desk: Flooding in Germany, caused due to torrential rainfall has left at least 80 people dead and dozens missing.
As reported by a local media source, the disheartening events occurred on Friday.
The flood has affected the two German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, in a severe manner.
Among all the affected, the town of Erfstadt-Blessem, near Cologne, witnessed floodwaters causing a row of houses to collapse.
In the town of Sinzig, 12 out of 35 residents in a care home for disabled people died after flood waters swept through the building as they slept.
The town called “Schuld an der Ahr” (with a population of 700) in the Rhineland-Palatinate state was the worst hit, with some house even destroyed by the floods.
The Rhineland-Palatinate state’s Interior Department previously told the media that “the fate of 40 to 60 people remains unclear”.
Regarding North Rhine-Westphalia, 23 districts have been affected by the flood, and according to figures previously released by the Interior Department of North Rhine-Westphalia, at least 30 people have died in the state.
As stated by the local authorities, they were constantly receiving emergency calls from people trapped by floodwater, but rescue in many cases was not possible.
Infact, several other counties have also been affected severely because of the flood.
The scientists had been repeatedly warning the people, regarding how the human-induced climate change would bring pulses of extreme rainfall and this flood was an example of the presumption.
German President Frank Walter Steinmeier also called for action on climate change, saying, “Only if we take up the fight against climate change decisively will we be able to keep extreme weather conditions such as we are experiencing now in check.”
Meanwhile, clean-up and recovery work is underway and soldiers have also arrived in the affected areas to support rescue efforts.
Photo | Aljazeera
