Death toll in Europe flash floods hits 153

0
843

The death toll from devastating floods in Germany reached 133 on Saturday according to the police. This has brought  the total number of people killed in Europe to 153.

Daily Mail reports that rescuers resumed the search for survivors with hundreds still missing on Saturday morning as desperate families released pictures of their loved ones.

This is the  latest episode in the evolving weather crisis in central Europe, with more than 130 people killed across Germany, marking the country’s deadliest floods since at least 1962 when more than 300 people were killed in flooding in Hamburg.

- Advertisement -

READ ALSO: BREAKING: Fire guts large supermarket in Abuja

At least another 23 people were killed in neighbouring Belgium where a ‘tsunami-like’ torrent of water inundated parts of Leige and Verviers, causing the Meuse and Vesdre rivers to burst their banks.

- Advertisement -

There are fears that toll could rise considerably with hundreds of people still missing, mostly from the hard-hit Ahrweiler region, south of Bonn, where whole villages were destroyed as the Ahr river broke its banks.

- Advertisement -

Names, pictures, and details of the last contact with ten people who are unaccounted for were published in German outlet Bild as part of a campaign to help find the missing.

A family were among the missing on Saturday morning. Pictures of Hans Neufeld, 71, wife Ella, 59, and their son Frank, 22, were submitted by the couple’s first son Harry, 30.

-Advertisement-


He said they were last seen at home in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler in the early hours of Thursday, when flood waters started rising significantly. ‘Since then, there has been no trace,’ he said.

Karl-Heinz Zimmermann, a 93-year-old grandfather from Bad Neuenahr was reported missing by his granddaughter Sandy Zimmermann.  She said she last spoke to him around 10pm on Thursday evening.

‘He wanted to go to bed normally, and didn’t feel threatened by the water’, she said. ‘But now the whole house is full of mud and nobody can be reached there. I tried to call him all day – over and over again. The fire brigade doesn’t know where he is either.’

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, and vice Prime Minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne, visited the disaster zone in Belgium on Saturday.

We do everything possible to supply quality news and information to all our valuable readers day in, day out and we are committed to keep doing this. Your kind donation will help our continuous research efforts.

-Advertisement-

-Want to get the news as it breaks?-

- Advertisement -