The Sunday Times has broken the story that the German government was warned in advance by European weather institutions about the coming flood but failed to act.
“The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river,” the Times wrote yesterday. “Over the next few days a team of scientists sent the German authorities a series of forecasts so accurate that they now read like a macabre prophecy: the Rhineland was about to be hit by ‘extreme’ flooding, particularly along the Erft and Ahr rivers, and in towns such as Hagen and Altena. Yet despite at least 24 hours’ warning that predicted, almost precisely, which districts would be worst affected when the rains came, the flood still caught many of its victims largely unawares.” [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-knew-the-floods-were-coming-but-the-warnings-didnt-work-cn99wjxzs]
Hydrologist Hannah Cloke from the Reading University, who works for the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) warning system, said EFAS had sent “warnings to the German and Belgian government” on July 10. “They should have warned the population,” she told the Times, emphasizing that it is useless to have giant computer models that forecast weather accurately, if the population do not know what to do in a flood. “The fact that people were not evacuated or did not receive warnings strongly suggests that something went wrong.” It is a “monumental systemic failure.”
