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Floods threaten communities in northern Germany
DW (English)
Follow
1/5/2024
Parts of northern Germany have been hit by floods after days of heavy rains. Rising floodwaters have put dikes at risk of collapse. DW went to a village in Lower Saxony that is now bracing for the danger of collapsing dikes.
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00:00
Floodwaters as far as the eye can see.
00:03
At this small village of Thören in Germany's north,
00:06
rising waters have been collecting for nearly two weeks,
00:10
threatening to get into houses.
00:14
Tanja Woth built this self-made dike to protect her home.
00:19
It's really depressing.
00:23
First there was the danger of floodwaters from behind,
00:26
now because of the groundwater,
00:28
we also have a threat from the other side.
00:30
You think it can't be real. What's going on?
00:33
You just try to use humour to deal with it.
00:37
Outside her house, large pumps are working constantly, day and night.
00:43
Germany has mobilized volunteers from civil protection services,
00:47
but it's a race against the clock and the water.
00:52
In this place we are protecting the village with our pumping capacities.
00:57
We have two high-capacity pumping modules here.
01:01
Each of these pumps can pump 5000 liters per minute.
01:05
And we try to bring the water away from the houses,
01:09
so that this small channel, which is now a big lake,
01:12
will not rise more, so that the village and the people in the houses
01:18
don't get too much flooding.
01:20
The whole village is involved.
01:23
Neighbours are sharing pumps.
01:25
But there is a common fear.
01:27
If the dike around Törn breaks, most of the houses will be flooded.
01:33
The problem is the water is standing here much too long for this dike.
01:38
It's for short term, but it's now nearly two weeks.
01:41
We have special people who will check the strongness of the dikes.
01:47
And if they get weak or if there are small holes,
01:51
we try to fix them and to support the dike so that it will still stand strong.
01:56
Millions of sandbags have been distributed in the flood-hit areas
02:02
to protect settlements and dikes.
02:05
Help is even coming from France.
02:08
French civil security workers travelled 1200 kilometers
02:12
from the south of Paris to control the situation.
02:16
It's part of the EU's cooperation system for disaster response.
02:21
One of them is Ludovic Pénanger,
02:24
who brought experience and some special material to the flooded area.
02:29
We will build a barrier, which you can see here.
02:34
This barrier will be filled with water and will be one meter high.
02:37
The idea is to build a mobile dike, which will be 650 meters long,
02:41
to prevent the water behind us from flooding the village.
02:46
Thören is relying on the team of experts doing everything they can to save it.
02:52
But it's heavily dependent on the weather forecast too,
02:56
which is finally predicting a couple of dry days after weeks of rain.
03:01
of rain.
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