Major flooding in Meppen, just across the border. Hotel guests cancel their rooms and the elderly are evacuated from their nursing homes.
24-year-old Florian Snippe smokes a cigarette. He earned that. The young German volunteer from the Technisches Hilfwerk Meppen lugged sandbags all night long. The dike around the Eems in Meppen has been in danger of breaking since Thursday evening and there is still an increased risk of flooding.
The high water levels just across the border are not our fault, according to the Vechtstromen and Hunze en Aa’s water boards. Nevertheless, the nuisance is very close. According to public broadcaster NDR More than 100,000 people in the state of Lower Saxony are affected by flooding.
Soured muscles
So is Snippe. He was summoned early in the evening on Thursday. Now, 18 hours later, he can feel his muscles. But the work is far from finished. When he’s back in bed? “Keine Ahnung.”
There is something beautiful about it, says Snippe. “People give us coffee and food. We have quite a lot of fun with it that way. And when residents see us working, they have confidence in a good outcome.” Yet the downpours that are sweeping across the region are not doing the nerves any good. The situation in the cities of Meppen, Lilienthal and Verden is critical. Residents in some of the neighborhoods have been urged to leave their homes.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephan Weil said that such high water in Lower Saxony “has never happened before. Experts have long warned that increasing extreme weather events are linked to climate change.”
Evacuated nursing home
Back to Meppen. Some of the sandbags are located in front of the Emsblick nursing home. The emergency services are not taking any chances there either: the 47 residents have been evacuated. Some in weaker health were accommodated in a special emergency facility in the hospital in Meppen. This is how 90-year-old Hermann Sheuter also left here last night. His daughter Brunhilde Köhler (68) was called to pick him up on the night from Thursday to Friday at 12 noon.
Now she is back at the nursing home. “We came to collect my father’s photos and his beloved TV armchair.” Köhler’s sister, brother-in-law and husband come out with a gray chair on a cart and several bags full of photo frames and albums. “My father is afraid that the water… Let’s say: we just take it with us just to be sure.”
“Our living room has now become a bedroom, my father can no longer climb the stairs,” continues Köhler. Laughing: “We don’t live very spaciously. The Christmas tree also had to make way.” Actually, Köhler was going to visit her sister-in-law and brother-in-law in Oldenburg for New Year’s Eve. “We just canceled that.”
‘No disaster tourists’
On the other side of the Eems, Ron and Carla van der Kolk (61 and 59) are photographing the river. Trees, posts and fences stand in the middle of the fast flowing water. The couple comes from Sleen, but happened to be in Meppen to drop Ron’s mother off at a friend’s house. “Then we thought: let’s take a look,” says Ron. “But we are absolutely not disaster tourists,” adds Carla.
“Everyone here has cellars under their house. People are busy pumping it empty. All pumps are already sold out,” says Ron. He and Carla also lived here until a few years ago.
The German police and the Drenthe Safety Region called on Dutch people from the border region not to go to the affected area. Previously, emergency services were said to have been harassed by ‘flood tourists’.
Hotel Via Plaza has not noticed any increased disaster tourism. Rather the opposite, says receptionist Frida Mertens. “We have had cancellations because of the water. Guests ask us if they are safe here.” That’s true, the hotel is on the side of the Eems where the dike is not under pressure. “Even our parking garage is still dry – except for a few puddles.”