Floods wreak havoc in western Europe; botched warnings
Massive floods after torrential rains have affected Germany and Belgium, and to a lesser extent Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with significant loss of life and property destruction.
European leaders have blamed AGW, as you might have predicted, although there is no way of knowing whether that has anything to do with this event. The beauty of AGW is that any extreme weather event can be blamed on it and no one needs to prove it, nor can it be disproved.
The photos show a lot of property destruction. Over a hundred people are dead and many more missing. Germany, one of the worlds’ most developed countries, is described as having been taken by surprise:
Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist who set up and now advises the European Flood Awareness System – an EU programme designed to provide early warnings of dangerous floods – said alerts were sent to authorities in Europe over the weekend.
“There were alerts going out… saying there’s some very serious rain and floods coming: be aware. It’s then for the national authorities to take that information and go with it,” she said.
Prof Cloke said there were places where the system had “done what it’s designed to do”, with early warnings heeded.
But there were “also places where those warnings did not get through to the people and they did not know it was going to happen”.
Prof Cloke set up the warning system after deadly flooding in Europe in 2002, hoping to prevent such an event from happening again.
But she said the latest flooding had exposed “breaks in the chain”…
Prof Cloke says Germany has a “fragmented” system involving many different authorities in different states, resulting in varying responses.
A spokesman for the German weather service Deutscher Wetterdienst said it had issued a number of warnings about extreme rainfall. He said it was up to other authorities to determine the flood risk and act on evacuating people, or taking other measures…
Prof Cloke said there were places where people did not know the floods were coming, or did not know how to respond to protect themselves and their homes.
“They were putting themselves at risk, they were walking through the floodwater,” she explained…
Friederike Otto, associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said “urgent education” was needed on the risks of flooding.
“I think people are really not aware that weather can actually be deadly,” she said.
Where’s that vaunted German efficiency when you need it? What a terrible situation, and seemingly preventable if the warning system had done its job. Note also that this system was set up under the EU banner, and it doesn’t sound as though it filtered down to the more local authorities. Nor does it sound as though people have the old-fashioned common sense to understand what a flood is and what it can do – perhaps because we are generally so protected against things.
Unlike Germany, however, the Netherlands avoided fatalities:
The Copernicus Emergency Management Service said it sent more than 25 warnings for specific regions of the Rhine and Maas river basins in the days leading up to the flooding, through its European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), well before heavy rains triggered the flash flooding. But few of these early warnings appear to have been passed on to residents early — and clearly — enough…
In Belgium, too, communication and organization appear to have been problems…
In the Netherlands, just across its borders with Germany’s and Belgium’s flood-devastated areas, the picture is entirely different. The Netherlands too experienced extreme rainfall — albeit not quite as heavy as those in Germany and Belgium — and it hasn’t escaped unscathed. But its towns are not entirely submerged and not a single person has died. Officials were better prepared and were able to communicate with people quickly, said Professor Jeroen Aerts, head of the Water and Climate Risk department at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
“We better saw the wave coming, and where it was going,” Aerts told CNN.
The Netherlands has a long history of water management and their success in the face of this disaster may offer the world a blueprint on how to handle floods…
Much of the [The Netherlands] is essentially sinking.
Its water management infrastructure is among the best in the world — involving giant walls with moveable arms the size of two football fields, coastal dunes that are reinforced with some 12 million cubic meters of sand per year, and simple things, like dikes and giving rivers more room to swell by lowering their beds — or floors — and expanding their banks.
Its strength lies largely in its organization. The country’s infrastructure is managed by a branch of government devoted solely to water…
Oh, and it had less rain.
However, unlike the Netherlands, most countries are not organized around water control. It seems that in Europe this time, all the information was there to have organized an evacuation and prevented the worst loss of life, although not the property damage. But it wasn’t done.
The Netherlands know that water is a serious threat, and plan ahead. Have done so for a long time.
Much of the damage in Germany occurred in NorthRhine Westphalia, which is led by the guy who seeks to replace Merkel, incompetents all around. My cat could run the country better. And, of course, they are all going to push for BS to stop climate change. That will be all we hear in the upcoming election campaigns.
On the Texas Coastal Bend, we had 25 inches of rain in three days a couple of weeks ago. It was no picnic, some people got water in their homes, and roads were nearly impassable for a couple of days. I know we all remember that Hurricane Harvey dumped 60 inches in a single day on Houston. Areas just south of Houston got 45 inches in one day in 1978.
I was shocked to see the images of devastation in Germany, but even more shocked when I finally found articles specifying what “unprecedented” and “catastrophic” rain totals meant: between 4 and 8 inches. I realize even 4-8 inches can be awful in areas that, unlike my own Gulf Coast, aren’t flat. Still, is it possible that those quaint old German towns have never experienced 4-8 inches before? It’s not an arid country. Their rainfall must be incredibly modest, but reliable, to sustain so much agriculture and forested land without ever topping 8 inches in a day for centuries at a time.
According to this news item, the flooding wave began to cause damage on July 12. But much of Europe was highly distracted around that time, as Italy was representing the EU in the World Cup soccer championship against those EU traitors, the U.K.
On July 11 Italy beat the U.K., so that requires at least a day or two of getting drunk and cheering Italy and the EU. And who wants to listen to Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading? Another Brit. traitor.
Small joke, maybe. Maybe not. Apparently, the people of the EU zone really wanted to stick it to the Brits. in soccer.
The default answer on CNN was global warming. No other explanation or facts even discussed. Fake News. They don’t even try to be accurate and neutral.
I’ve been watching a French made TV series called “The Earth’s Furies” which covers the obvious gamut including floods. Apparently, in 1910, Paris was hit with massive floods. They also covered some Euro flooding within the last decade or two, but I think 110 years ago was the big one.
According to the reporting there has never been previous flooding in those flood zones.
Talked to a guy who’d spent time in Sweden. He said some Swedes think Americans are always in mortal peril. Alligators in the swimming pool. Rattlesnakes on the patio. Brown recluse in the wood pile. Fatal dehydration sitting in the shade in Phoenix at 14% humidity. Forest fires. Earthquakes. Signs in condos in the mountains: “Do not take out trash before dawn or after dark.”
Floods like that which annoyed Noah.
If your extremes are not all that extreme, planning for an extreme is not a high priority, nor is paying attention to yet another warning from the nanny state.
Warnings? Meh. Who needs ’em…
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/sweden-gun-crime-epidemic-spiraling-out-control/
Barry Meislin. Immigrants from where? The South Side of Chicago, Compton, Philly, and is it the Crips and Bloods, the Black P Stones, MS-13? Inquiring minds want to know.
This brings to mind the terrible floods in China last year at this time. Official death count: under 220. I wonder what the real number was.
@Eva Marie:
Probably no more than 500 or a thousand.
People fundamentally misunderstand how censorship and propaganda work in China.
When you control the press… and more to the point most people who work for the press are *not* actively working to subvert and destroy society (Hello, Westerners) then it’s OK to be pretty honest about disasters and accidents. What gets censored are the small stuff daily irritations and anything requiring a truly Big Lie (i.e. Wuhan Lab stuff).
A natural disaster in China always follows the same reporting trend:
1) Nature Does its thing. Tragedy ensues. Lots of pictures of the damage. LOTS of pictures of brave PLA soldiers carrying sandbags to shore up levees, digging people out, etc.
2) Heartwarming stories of individual heroism.
3) If disaster sufficiently large, inspection visit by No. 2 or No. 3 who plugs some gaps in response and further alleviates people’s hardship.
4) If any corruption or mismanagement involved, suitable scapegoats are found and pilloried. More often than not these days it’s the correct guilty parties. Disasters are often a good opportunity for the Central Government to sniff out corruption, cronyism and banditry in local officialdom and clean house.
5) Several months later will be stories of reconstruction and recovery. And it’s all neatly tied up in a bow and that’s all she wrote.
Now compare that awful hive-minded slitty-eyed robotic totalitarian hell with what we have in the West.
Note also that this system was set up under the EU banner, and it doesn’t sound as though it filtered down to the more local authorities.
Brussels bureaucrats are designed for pomp and posture, not for mere service to constituents.
The same people who can’t predict weather 12 hours out, can’t organize a response to extreme weather in 24 hours, and can’t plan for a rainy day that is supposedly caused by the AGW they’ve been screaming about for 20 years – expect me to turn over civilization to them because, . . reasons.
“…brings to mind…”
Well, another year, another flood (along with the obligatory climate porn)….
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/watch-two-dams-chinas-inner-mongolia-collapse-after-heavy-rain
According to EU rules everyone is supposed to take their share of rain.
“till, is it possible that those quaint old German towns have never experienced 4-8 inches before?”
Typical bollocks to create drama and panic.
Of course it’s rained this much before in a day, and more. In fact it happens several times a year.
What’s different this time is that it happened after the upstreams regions and the local soil had already been filled to capacity by the rain of the previous months.
The Netherlands and surrounding areas of Belgium and Germany have had over twice as much rain as normal every months this year from February.
The soil is saturated, the rivers were already at maximum pre-flood levels and had been for weeks.
Lakes and reservoirs were filled to capacity.
Essentially it was a disaster waiting to happen, on a scale similar or worse to a very harsh winter in the Alps with excessive snow followed by a very sudden thaw (which happens once in a while and also causes flooding in the Rhine and Meuse).
Usually that flooding is restricted to the Netherlands because the Germans manage to predict it and direct all the water downstream to where it doesn’t bother them.
This time however it was so much water and the ground so saturated and weak that the ground itself collapsed into the riverbeds in Germany.
@Arty:
And woe betide it if it doesn’t fall in cubical droplets.
They won’t let an opportunity go to waste. There’s going to be a growth industry in flood-abatement boondoggles for a few years now.
This has happened in HK. Everything which can be concreted has been concreted. There’s probably a culvert for every man, woman and child.
Re: Tommy Jay
You think Brits should show more loyalty to a 30 year-old Frankenstein political entity that is an anti-democratic administrative nightmare over their own country that has existed for over a millenium? The Brits were just the first to recognize and act on the fact that the EU is an unworkable mess that serves the interests of the Germans and the French primarily at the expense of its other members. I predict more defections in coming years.
Looking at the photos and videos I was struck by the fact that many of damaged buildings are sited on the flood plains of the rivers.
Never, ever, build on a flood plain.
It should be a wake up call. Countries that have globalist politicians who are pro open border, vocally anti climate change etc are taking their eye of the more mundane tasks such a management and governance.
Netherlands might have received less rain, but the Rhein empties into it while carrying all that German rainfall.
The causes of the European flood event are pretty much the same as flood events in the US. The natural flow patterns have been interrupted. River courses have been engineered and constrained by walls, dikes, and levies. People have built into the former flood plains rather than on the high ground where towns were previously built for protection from invaders. Heavy rain events result in water concentrations greater than what engineers predicted, rivers and streams overflow the artificial constraints and flood the towns. A few decades ago, the Mississippi River again flooded, homes were recently rebuilt after many previous flooding, were destroyed. The owners set about getting federally guaranteed loans to rebuild in the same locations. The loans were denied unless the location was changed to much higher ground. In the time since then, the Big Muddy has flooded several more times but without the vast destruction. The solution was simple and effective – get people and property out of nature’s way.
I lived in Germany for a total of 10 years between 1971 and 1990, all in the Wiesbaden area. The Rhine flooded about every other year, as did the Main and the Mosel. I worked in imagery intelligence, and saw the result of flooding all throughout the main European flood zones. When you build for “most likely” and Nature doesn’t cooperate, you have disasters.
China floods, updated:
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/dam-near-chinas-flooded-zhenghou-city-collapses-third-last-48-hours
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/watch-chinese-subway-passengers-trapped-chest-high-floodwaters-heavy-rain-pounds-henan
Of course AGW caused the flooding. Floods, hurricanes and tornados never ever happened before humans started pumping hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.