How Deadly Flooding in Germany and Belgium Exposed Europe ’s Climate Change Hubris

Gaping holes of muddy brown water where manicured streets used to be. Huge piles of abandoned belongings set on fire because there’s nowhere else to put the trash. Army tanks rolling through once picturesque villages now turned to rubble. Northwestern Europeans—accustomed to a mild climate rarely troubled by the extremes of weather they see on the news—were not prepared for the scenes they saw this week after the worst flooding to hit the region in at least 80 years. “People kept saying it was worse than the war,” says Arne Piepke, from the DOCKS photography collective, which captured the scenes in western Germany—the center of the flooding. War was the best analogue locals could think of for the death and destruction wrought by the weather, he says. “This just hasn’t happened here before.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] More than 7 inches of rain fell on parts of the western German states Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia between Tuesday and Thursday— roughly double the normal expected rainfall for the whole of July, causing major rivers to burst their banks and sweep away entire villages. DOCKS CollectiveA view of the flood-damaged village of Dernau from a hillside on July 15, 2021. DOCKS CollectiveCars and flood damage in the village of Ahrweiler, Germany on July 15, 2021. At least 160 people died in Germany and 31 in Belgium, and hundreds more are missing. Some 370 miles of railway t...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Londontime Source Type: news