News of the week - Floodings of the Elbe

The memories of the big flooding of the river Elbe in 2002 must have come back again very strongly for many Germans in the East and Northeast of the country. Last week, the water in the river reached critical levels again. Many cities and villages were flooded, and many dikes are on the verge of breaking-through. The situation is improving slowly, but the end is not in sight yet, as the water level is decreasing slowly.

The main cause of the high water level, was the melting water from the mountaineous South, where a record amount of snow fell this year.

I am not an expert, but I do wonder how it is possible that four years after the big flooding, in roughly the same area of the country, so many cities and villages were flooded again! There have been many dike-improving-projects, early-warning-systems, water-management-initiatives, and so on, but if I look at the images I see on TV I ask myself if really nothing has been done in those four years. In Germany, it usually takes a lot of time for projects to get realised, I know that. But it does disappoint me a bit, that even in this situation, action has lost the battle against discussion. It was not very difficult to predict that comparable water levels as those in 2002 were quite likely to happen again in the near future. During the past decades, the weather has become more extreme everywhere, and as an effect of global warming, more and more melting water is flowing through the rivers in spring. Yet, nobody really did anything. Plans were made, discussion were held, but realised was very little. Even after the record amounts of snow in Bavaria and Austria, only one or two months ago, there was hardly any public discussion about possible flooding problems as a result of the snow. It puzzled me already, two months ago. And puzzles me even more, right now, watching those, in the mean time familiar, images on TV. Will people ever change?