Four more people were killed in the Belgian city of Verviers, prompting prime minister to appeal for international aid. Severe flooding also impacted the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with warnings also issued in France.
“It is a catastrophe, there is no other way to put it,” Malu Dreyer, the premier of Rhineland Palatinate, one of the German states most devastated by flooding, said in a speech to the local parliament. Helicopters had been deployed for rescues, she added.
“Entire villages are flooded,” she said. “Houses float away just like that.”
Police said at least 18 people died in the district of Ahrweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate from flooding on the river Ahr, a tributary of the Rhine. Earlier in the day, the local police had said that as many as 50 residents were trapped on the roofs of their homes awaiting rescue.
Videos showed city streets turned into swirling rivers and others engulfed by landslides.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to meet President Biden in Washington later Thursday, said she was “shocked” at scenes from flooded areas and offered sympathy to the families of those dead and missing.
Police created a hotline for residents to report those missing. “The consequences are devastating, and our first priority is still to save lives,” Jürgen Pföhler, the county commissioner of the Ahrweiler district said at a news conference. “All our efforts are concentrated on that.”
In neighboring North Rhine-Westfalia state, the army deployed tanks and trucks to the city of Hagen to clear roads of rubble and debris. Three bridges were destroyed, according to police.
Emergency responders in the city of Solingen rescued about 130 people. “We got people out with aerial ladders, boats, buoys. It was all improvised,” a spokesman for the fire department told German news channel WDR.
Two firefighters sent to assist those trapped by rising waters in the Sauerland region died this week, according to the German news agency DPA.
The country’s biggest power distribution company, Westnetz, estimated Thursday that around 200,000 homes were without electricity as a result of the widespread flooding.
On Wednesday, the German weather service issued an extreme weather alert — a warning that environmental expert Bernd Mehlig said was “completely unusual in summer.”
Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for the German government, said the severe flooding was “terrible” and raised questions about its possible link to climate change.
“Even though not every event, not every flooding or local incident, is related to climate change, many scientists tell us that the frequency, the intensity and the regularity with which this happens is a consequence of climate change,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
On social media, many shared photos of rising waters, while local police used the platforms to urge onlookers not to block vital escape routes.
Climate activist Greta Thunburg, also shared videos of the floods. “This is not ‘the new normal’,” she wrote on Twitter. “We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency, and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent.”
Parts of the Netherlands were also flooded, with a red code warning issued for Limburg province. Local media reported that many had been forced to evacuate and as many as 400 homes were without power.
Earlier this week in Britain, flash floods sparked widespread travel chaos, with parts of London experiencing a month’s worth of rain in just one day. Locals were evacuated and cars became trapped as floodwaters continued to rise.
Switzerland also issued travel and weather warnings this week as heavy rainfall and thunderstorms brought flooding to the city of Zurich.
“I went out for a walk in the early morning and the rain just didn’t stop. There were huge trees that had been brought down in the night, it was really scary,” one local told Reuters.
Luisa Beck in Berlin, Quentin Aries in Brussels and Amar Nadhir in Bucharest contributed to this report.
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