Two dead, extensive damage, desperate people: The brutal force of the flood was evident in Schorndorf-Miedelsbach in Baden-Württemberg. Now the clean-up work begins and an uncertain future awaits.
The catastrophe came without any warning. On Sunday evening, the residents of the Schorndorf district of Miedelsbach felt a false sense of security. “At 6 p.m. we thought we were out of the worst of it,” says Silke Becker, as she stands in front of the packed container on her property with destroyed furniture and defective electrical appliances.
Car, e-bike, motorcycle – everything was “completely submerged,” says Becker. The Miedelsbachers didn’t have time to save anything. The water was already around 1.5 meters deep in the garage and the ground floor of their house, where her husband also has his office.
The oil heating system probably didn’t survive the flood either. What was particularly bitter was that the couple had only started renovating the living room a few weeks ago. Numerous packed moving boxes and furniture were therefore stored in the basement. “There is still water in two rooms,” says Becker.
Late on Sunday evening, around 10 p.m., a neighbor wrote to her that the water level in the nearby Tannbach was rising dangerously quickly. “15 minutes later, the garage was full,” Becker said, describing the chaos. “It was extremely frightening.” Then the masses of water washed cars and other loose objects through the street. One car ended up in a community center, and several crashed into and over each other.
Corinna Zehnder and Andrea Schuster also observed these scenes from their houses. “First there were solar lamps floating there, then glass containers, then cars, mobile homes and trailers,” says Schuster, still in disbelief. No one here has ever experienced anything like this, especially since the stream is actually only ankle-deep.
In the afternoon, she sat in the garden, enjoyed the sunshine after the rain and gave her friends the all-clear. When her son came home in the evening, he pointed out the high water level – a short time later, the stream overflowed its banks and a flood wave came down the slope. “It was terrible. It happened so quickly that we couldn’t react,” says Zehnder. It was only after several hours that the water gradually drained away again. They can’t pump out the cellar yet because of the oily water – a specialist company has to come here.
Unlike the Bavarian flood regions, Miedelsbach was caught off guard by the masses of water. There are no sandbags or other lines of defense. Instead, the streets are still covered in mud in the evening, residents and helpers are carrying soaked furniture out of their houses and clearing away the worst damage. “There’s nothing left,” says a man with a stony expression and a blank look as he rinses the mud out of his garage with a water hose. The car parked outside was pushed into the neighbor’s fence.
The residents do not yet know what will happen next. Silke Becker has not yet seen a city representative on her street, she says, and she still has to deal with the insurance companies. The fire brigade has not come by several hours after she called – the emergency services are overloaded with even more acute emergencies.
Two dead people were found in a neighboring street during pumping work in a cellar. The police have since found out that they are a 58-year-old resident of the house and his 84-year-old mother. “According to witnesses, both people were busy pumping out the water that had entered the house in the cellar on Sunday evening,” said the police. The course of events is still unclear, as is the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing.