Glaciers across the Himalayas are melting at an extraordinary rate, with new research showing that the vast ice sheets there shrank 10 times faster in the past 40 years than during the previous seven centuries.
Avalanches, flooding and other effects of the accelerating loss of ice imperil residents in India, Nepal and Bhutan and threaten to disrupt agriculture for hundreds of millions of people across South Asia, according to the researchers. And since water from melting glaciers contributes to sea-level rise, glacial ice loss in the Himalayas also adds to the threat of inundation and related problems faced by coastal communities around the world.
BERLIN—Germany and neighboring countries were evacuating new areas hit or threatened by the region’s worst flooding in decades as the death toll across that part of Europe rose to around 170 on Saturday with rescuers searching for hundreds still missing.
Rainfall subsided at the start of the weekend, but authorities warned the flooding could continue for several more days before the water retreated. Farmland was devastated across the region.
More bodies were being recovered from flooded houses, the rubble of buildings and cars crushed by the torrent—meaning the final death toll is likely to be greater, several German officials said.
“The suffering just doesn’t stop,” Malu Dreyer, the premier of Rhineland Palatinate, one of the two German states affected, said on Friday. Ms. Dreyer said rescuers everywhere were finding the bodies of flood victims as the waters were withdrawing.
“One can only weep. This is horror.”
The worst-hit community was Ahrweiler in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a small county that was home to nearly 100 of the around 140 people who lost their lives to the floods in Germany. Four of the victims were firemen who died during rescue operations, authorities said.
“Ahrweiler was a beautiful town, and now everything is gone, I can’t even express how horrid this is,” Rose Eberle, a resident, told local television. Ms. Eberle’s home and her small business of 40 years were devastated by the flood, she said.
Among the victims were 12 disabled residents of a care home in the town of Sinzig, which was flooded in the middle of the night on Thursday. So sudden was the onset of the flash flood that a lone night watchman who evacuated residents to the upper floor didn’t have time to bring everyone to safety. The remaining residents were trapped upstairs by the flood until rescuers arrived in boats the next morning.
Entire villages and town districts were evacuated with the help of the armed forces in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, as these countries’ military joined in the effort to support thousands of rescue workers amid a shortage of helicopters and other hardware.
In some cases, rescuers had to wake up residents of endangered areas in the middle of the night and convince them to flee, with some people reluctant to leave their homes and farm animals behind, authorities said.
Members of the German armed forces searched for flood victims in Erftstadt on Saturday.
Photo:
sebastien bozon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Residents filled sandbags in Erftstadt Dirmerzheim on Saturday.
Photo:
sascha steinbach/epa/Shutterstock
Part of the west German town of Wassenberg was evacuated after flood water caused a local dam to burst overnight between Friday and Saturday. The nearby town of Erftstadt, near Cologne, was also evacuated Friday after a landslide spreading from a nearby quarry created a huge crater.
In Belgium, where nearly 30 people died, rescue and evacuation efforts were focused in and around the city of Liege, while Dutch soldiers helped build dikes around Roermond, using sandbags and military vehicles. A spokesman for the Belgian crisis center said that they expected to find more bodies as the waters retreated on Saturday and the coming days.
People made homeless by the catastrophe were put up in schools, hotels and sports halls, and authorities in all of the countries affected thanked the public for a flurry of donations of cash, clothes and food to help the survivors.
Flooding in western Europe after days of heavy rain caused houses to collapse. As nearly 160 people were reported dead and many more missing, officials said the German government and Parliament would work on an aid package to alleviate the suffering. Photo: Torsten Silz/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Hundreds of houses have collapsed or were left severely damaged in the western German states, Belgium’s region of Wallonia and the Dutch province of Limburg. Parts of Luxembourg were also flooded.
Some houses collapsed days after the initial flooding because the water weakened their foundations, prompting governments to warn residents of areas that had dried not to return to their homes—and even to look for missing people.
Electricity and water supplies as well as telecommunications were cut off in many areas. Parts of key roads and railways were destroyed by the enormous volumes of floodwater and some bridges were swept away, in what some residents described as the worst destruction in their region since World War II.
Several power stations were switched off and others are operating at a reduced capacity. Natural gas pipelines were shut down, affecting households that rely on gas for cooking and warm water.
Police in the German town of Koblenz warned residents of the danger of electrocution by high-voltage cables knocked down in flooded streets.
Damage after flooding in Pepinster, Belgium, on Saturday.
Photo:
Virginia Mayo/Associated Press
As highways were drained of floodwater, German troops used amphibious armored vehicles to remove dozens of cars that remained stuck in the mud and rubble.
Chancellor
Angela Merkel,
who will visit the flooded region on Sunday, said that the government would put together a substantial emergency aid package for the affected regions, and local officials announced that financial aid would be paid out in a swift and unbureaucratic manner.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
BERLIN—Rescuers in Germany and neighboring countries were racing to find survivors from the region’s worst flooding this century, as the death toll rose to over 100 with hundreds still missing following days of torrential rainfall that some politicians and scientists linked to climate change.
German authorities used helicopters and drones to locate survivors who fled to roofs and high ground without being able to collect any of their belongings when the homes were engulfed by flash floods that turned streets into rivers, swept away cars and crushed houses.
The German military joined in the effort to support thousands of rescue workers amid a shortage of helicopters and other hardware after hundreds of houses collapsed or became severely damaged in the Western states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. At least 93 people had been killed in Germany, according to local authorities on Friday.
Some 1,300 people are currently unaccounted for in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, a town about 35 miles south of Cologne, according to local authorities, though this may in part be due to mobile phone services being interrupted in parts of the region.
A handout photo from authorities in Rhein-Erft shows the extent of the flooding.
Photo:
rhein-erft-kreis/EPA/Shutterstock
Wreckage in Verviers, Belgium on Friday.
Photo:
yves herman/Reuters
Thousands of survivors were being put up in schools, hotels and sports halls amid a warning not to return to their homes even if the waters subside due to danger of the foundations crumbling after days of flooding, RhinelandPalatinate’s premier Malu Dreyer said in a broadcast interview Friday. Towns in the area are known for their medieval urban cores made up of half-timbered housing.
“I am shaken by the catastrophe that has caused the suffering of so many people in the flooded areas. My condolences go to the relatives of the dead and missing. I thank from my heart the many tireless helpers and rescue services,” German Chancellor
Angela Merkel
said in a tweet released by her spokesman on Thursday.
Similar scenes were playing out in southern Belgium, where at least 14 people died and many were being evacuated in the worst-hit areas in the Wallonia region, local authorities said. Across the border in the Dutch province of Limburg, rescuers were evacuating areas hit by the floods.
Meteorologists blamed the flooding on a rare summer cyclone that lingered over the flooded areas for days. They said changes in global weather patterns meant the storm remained stationed over Europe instead of drifting eastward.
The jet stream, a westbound wind current over the North Atlantic, has begun to meander over Western Europe in recent years, creating pockets of weather that could briefly capture storms over the area, said
Andreas Marx,
a climate researcher with the Helmholtz-Center for Environmental Research in Germany.
There was no doubt that the disaster had been related to climate change, said Germany’s interior minister
Horst Seehofer,
and called for more political action to lower emissions in the future.
Two firefighters died on Thursday while rescuing people trapped by the floods, according to authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The rainfall in the region has been subsiding since Thursday but infrastructure remained severely affected.
Survivors told German television how the torrent took away all of their possessions and in some cases swept away their entire homes. Parts of the Rhine, a major European waterway that swelled over its banks, remained closed to traffic.
Damaged cars were piled up on a street in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, on Friday.
Photo:
friedemann vogel/EPA/Shutterstock
People passed sand bags in Erftstadt, Germany, on Friday.
Photo:
thilo schmuelgen/Reuters
The floods coincide with a bout of severe heat and drought in parts of the U.S. and Europe, and some scientists say there is evidence of extreme weather events becoming more frequent as climate change progresses.
An October 2020 report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction found that the number of major natural disasters in the period 2000 to 2019 had risen 74.5% compared with the period 1980-1999, with a large part of the difference accounted for by weather-related events such as floods, storms and droughts.
While not all extreme weather events can be explained by climate change, many scientists have warned that global warming would lead to more unpredictable weather patterns and an increased occurrence of extreme events such as this year’s heat wave in the western U.S., according to Mr. Marx, the Helmholtz-Center researcher.
Mr. Marx noted that Germany had experienced similar disasters in the past 15 years and that it is difficult to establish a clear link between individual events and global climate change.
“But it is also true that such events are expected as the climate changes: a heated earth surface means more water in the atmosphere, and that can lead to severe rains and we are seeing this take place now,” Mr. Marx, who specializes in drought research, said.
There is clear evidence that extremely wet periods that regularly take place are getting wetter, while extremely dry periods are becoming drier due to climate change, he said.
A police car in the city center of Kircheim, Germany.
Photo:
Jonas Guettler/Associated Press
—Sha Hua contributed to this article.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
