Severe Flooding Traps Schoolchildren, Forces Helicopter Evacuations in Germany

Eric Chaney
Published: June 1,2016

Flooding  has trapped schoolchildren in a school and forced helicopter rescues in southern Germany. A district in Lower Bavaria has declared a natural disaster affecting three towns after heavy rain caused serious flooding, the Local reports. 

 

"About 250 school children are still in their classes," Walter Czech, mayor of Triftern bei Pfarrkirchen in the Rottal district, told broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk. "Fortunately, the building is located on a mountain. But perhaps the children have to spend the night in the gym because the access roads are impassable."

 

Triftern police told Bayerische Rundfunk that  several  people in the nearby village of Simbach were rescued by helicopters and evacuated to the police station.

 

According to Czech, the flooding situation had gotten dramatically worse on Wednesday, with the whole center of Triftern, a town of just over 5,000 people on the Austrian border, flooded by the Altbach river.

"In the last week southern Germany has seen 400+ percent of its average rainfall," said weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Belles.
Train traffic between Saxon capital Dresden and the Czech Republic was briefly halted after a mudslide, the Local reports. And firefighters in Bremen and Hanover were kept busy pumping out flooded cellars overnight as heavy rain swept into low-lying parts of the cities – including the Bremen fire service's own underground gym.
At least 4 people are likely dead  in another part of the country as a result of the same heavy rains. In Schwaebisch Gmuend, a firefighter and a man he was trying to rescue were sucked into a flooded underpass. Both men were presumed dead, though their bodies hadn't yet been recovered Monday, police said.
"As far as we can humanly judge, both are dead," a spokesman for the state interior ministry in Stuttgart told the Sydney Morning Herald.
. "It appears that Schwaebisch Gmuend is in a valley, so that may have played a roll in that water may have pooled in the valley," said Belles.
(MORE: 35 Injured After Lightning Strikes Children's Soccer Match in Germany)
The body of a third victim was found in a flooded garage in Weissbach near the city of Heilbronn. And in Schorndorf, near Stuttgart, a train fatally struck a 13-year-old girl as she sheltered from the rain under a railway bridge Sunday evening.
A 12-year-old boy who was with her was unharmed, but is receiving psychiatric support after the incident, the Morning Herald reported.
In the small town of Braunsbach, two streams burst their banks, unleashing floodwaters that destroyed one house, damaged several others and left streets strewn with debris.
Much of Germany experienced heavy rainstorms over the weekend. The heavy downpours also affected the state of Bavaria in the southeast, causing severe damage to properties in the area of Mittelfranken, where Nuremberg is situated.
Several residents in the Bavarian town of Frankenhoehe described the scenes to the Morning Herald as "like after the war".
Martin Jonas, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service, told the paper the unusually slow movement of the rainstorms had led to the severe flooding.
"The unusual thing about yesterday was that we were in a situation of relatively low pressure," Jonas said. "For that reason, the intensive downpours stayed above the same areas for a relatively long time.