They have never experienced such masses of water before: emergency services in Reichertshofen described in an interview with FOCUS online how they were overwhelmed by the extent of the flood. At midday, Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Faeser visited the scene of the accident.
A firefighter rarely says such a sentence, but Jürgen Lehner said it on Sunday evening: “We have lost the battle.” The volunteer fire department in Reichertshofen and its first commander did everything they could over the weekend to protect the town from the floodwaters. In the meantime, more than 100 soldiers from two relief contingents pitched in. But that was not enough.
On Sunday evening, frustration is in the air in the Reichertshofen fire station. Some comrades and the last soldiers are still here, but Lehner has sent the rest home. “Three days of work have been in vain, everything is flooded,” he says, looking at the exit from the site – but there is not much asphalt to be seen here. The fire station is basically the last remaining island, and up in the training room the district’s crisis team is still coordinating the other operations under its responsibility. The town is cut off from all sides, and only large work equipment such as dump trucks can make their way through the masses of water. The substation is still flooded, the internet is not available and the telephone network has largely collapsed.
The first commander of the Reichertshofen comrades describes these desperate hours. The river seemed calm in the morning, but by 11:30 a.m. everything had spiraled out of control. “It was difficult,” says Lehner, describing the emotional state: “We didn’t know how to react.” The fire brigades in the region are experienced in dealing with floods: “We know what’s going on.” Within a few hours, the river had exceeded every known flood threshold by up to one meter.
On Sunday afternoon, it seemed hopeless to continue to oppose this. “We’re through,” emphasises Lehner. They had worked for three days straight, and now the comrades simply needed a break. “When the water recedes, the real work will begin,” says the 1st Commander, aware of the challenge of pumping out the flooded cellars in the coming days.
District fire chief Christian Nitschke is aware of the frustration that the experiences of the past few hours have caused. The neighboring towns of Hohenwart and Baar-Ebenhausen have been hit just as badly. At the moment, one should not think about material things and must set priorities: “Now it’s about human lives.” And here, all evacuations have been completed successfully. For Manching, Nitschke is still hoping on Sunday evening that the emergency services will survive the peak.
District Administrator Albert Gürtner is still incredulous about the day: “The water masses penetrated so much that nothing could be done.” 3,500 emergency workers from the district and 1,500 from outside the district worked “excellently” together with the population. “It is no longer a given these days that people put themselves at the service of the public in this way,” stresses Gürtner. The death of a comrade in neighboring Pfaffenhofen on Saturday evening dampened the mood even more. “We have great sympathy for the family,” says the district administrator.
Until Friday evening, the district had data that predicted normal flooding. During the course of Saturday, the authorities were then surprised by the warning of an extreme flood – the only level above a 100-year flood. The situation then worsened with each passing hour. “There has never been a flood like this in living memory,” he said, speaking for the northern district of his administrative region.
The only glimmer of hope is the few rays of sunshine on Sunday evening and the weather forecast, which indicates that water levels will continue to fall. “These are certainly sunny forecasts after 48 hours of hell,” says District Fire Chief Nitschke. Especially since the situation on two dykes is also easing and there is a good chance that they will hold. “The water will recede very slowly,” he knows. But at least it is not foreseeable that things will get worse. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser have announced that they will be there on Monday afternoon to get an impression of the situation on site.