Germany’s “Katrina”: Officials Left Dams Full For Weeks Even With Heavy Rains In The Forecast

The person charged with the decision to draw down the stored water will of course be a government flunky.

Therefore, there will be no significant penalty for failing at your ONE JOB, and adding to the death toll.

The only exception, will be if some actual politician finds THEIR head on the chopping block. In that situation, a sacrificial lamb will be found on the “Water Resources” Board (whatever it is called in Germany).

One would think that they would do the right things, prevent floods, and then rightly claim that they are smart enough to beat CC, and look like heros. Strange!

So the professionals in charge of regulating water flow appear to have not thought through the consequences of this week’s circumstances. Even those with over 40 years of experience appear to have been flummoxed by the almost unimaginable occurrence of lots of rain followed by a forecast of further heavy rain to come and just allowed the water to build up to a dangerous levels.

Seriously?

And now the politicians have a crisis that cost lives to hang their tax rises on.

What a crock!!

Well, for a third time, rain is natural, floods are caused by the human built environment and human action and, more importantly, inaction. But as in all other cases, those in government who made the bad decisions will keep their jobs while yammering on about “climate change” and “resilency”.

They actually have a press in Germany? With real journalists? CBC would never report anything like that.

Here in central North Carolina the planners are always looking at the rainfall potential, especially with tropical storms. The information is constantly on local weather TV broadcasts and proactive action is taken when prudent. Of course we have flooding rains every year. The areas that flood are well known and our counties have rapid response teams outfitted with inflatable boats and practice constantly since flash flooding from intense thunderstorms can occur during the summer. So it can be done and done well.

That said people still drive into rapidly moving water and end up on top of their cars waiting on a helicopter or rescue team to get them to safety. You can’t fix stupid.

O Griffio, Griffio, wherefore art thou Griffio?

They probably did not want to “waste” that energy because who know when the winds stops blowing. A lot of the energy in Germany comes from unreliable sorces like wind and solar.

By all means blame the autorities. But don’t people know where they live?

This is exactly what happened in Cumbria during the November 2009 floods.

United Utilities were accused of allowing the revervoirs to overflow for 3 weeks prior to the devastating Cumbria floods.

Solicitor Kevin Commons, 60, was a senior partner at KJ Commons & Co solicitors and was representing residents in a law suit against United Utilities.

Solicitor Kevin Commons also happened to be the first of 13 victims all allegedly murdered by the alleged perp, Derrick Bird, in a “shooting spree” on June 2, 2010 …

http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=147802#147802

MG

Not longtime ago we were told to become out of drink water, live in the 4th year of a drought, but the dams are full.
Can’t finish that puzzle…

1. Cause the disaster.
2. Blame something else that is far off and extremely indirect and nebulous and make promises to fix it.

The simplified bureaucratic liberal’s playbook.

Nothing more than the standard procedure of liberals. Blame others and always include CLIMATE CHANGE. {PUPPETS UNITE}.

Now they want to hide their gross incompetence

I’m not convinced, myself, that this is just incompetence.

>> Dereliction of duty?
Maybe the experts and technicians controlling the water level typically face a similar problem as Lake Mead, when it does not rain much in summers in that region! Germany had a few dry summers in the recent years and keeping the water level up saving the resource while producing more electric energy was a strong incentive.. until it went wrong..

Guessing they kept dams full to maximize hydro electric generation. Trying to maximize green energy. I would count those deaths as renewable energy deaths.

IS this anything like the Johnstown flood? https://damfailures.org/case-study/south-fork-dam-pennsylvania-1889/

Only asking, because negligence and poor management added to the dam failure, when it could have been prevented.

I think Merkel should be sent packing, along with all the cronies who hang onto her like glue. Fire her and start over and get some REAL engineers in there.

Over here in the sticks, when the Mississippie starts to even vaguely approach flood stage, the Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t wait for and OK from some government bureaucrat. They just go do their job.

The flooding fits into the climate change agenda. The ends justify the means.

Merkel is not running for re-election, so the temptation to blame her would not have much traction. But the hard core greens trying to rely on “renewable” energy are probably responsible.

People in big organizations find ways to not take responsibility for screw ups. Currently the scape goat is climate change.

Germany has elections in September. After the demise of Merkel they want to install an outright and official socialist regime with the green party in the lead. The media outlets heavily exploit the “climate disaster” as proof of man-made climate change and totalitarian socialism as the only remedy.

Of course they did not warn anyone to mitigate damage and loss of lifes. Equally they had no intent using dams to counter the floods. I would not even be suprised if they helped nature with a little bit of silver iodide. Just another Gleiwitz incident when needed..

I wish Wattsupwiththat was on instagram and other social media, this site saved me from the climate anxiety I had, and after the floods, I patiently waited for a post to explain why the floods were so bad, as the news media, harps on the normal “climate change” route… Now I know the truth, Thank you for this post

Hanlon’s Razor “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” (sometimes stated as “incompetence” instead)

I’m beginning to think we’re far beyond mere incompetence or stupidity. At what point does repeated stupidity become malicious?

Perhaps we should have sent 617 squadron over again to help…

The terrible flood disaster in West Germany continues to shake up. After activists and politicians reflexively interpreted the floods as a product of climate change, the tide has now turned. More and more media are now questioning the instrumentalisation of the flood and calling for a completely different discussion: Why did the federal government and regional administrations not react more decisively despite the heavy rain warning up to 4 days before the disaster? Why was it not evacuated earlier and on a larger scale? A British expert on flood warnings is disappointed that the German authorities have apparently slept here.

Climate change was not to blame for the catastrophe – it was heavy rain!

Still trying to divert from the main point: the scale of the rainfall and the huge area of effect and the reason for the rainfall: climate change.

Given that this event far, far exceeded anything in living memory and beyond, perhaps the officials underestimated the possible effects. After all, those dams haven’t overflowed or broken in the last century, in any rain conditions.

Sadly 19th and 20th century infrastructure is no longer climate proof: the UK has frequently seen this with the Whaley Bridge dam, the Dawlish rail embankment, railway landslides

A local controversy of dereliction (a la Katrina controversy) that influences a global sociopolitical climate. RIP

I read that most of the deaths were in Ahr valley. Looking on Bing maps, I failed to spot any dams or reservoirs within the Ahr river watershed. Maybe dam management was a factor in the floods elsewhere though.

Maybe some of the water-control people in Germany got so accustomed to the narrative that “global warming” was supposed to control droughts, and they left the dams full to protect against a “drought” that never came, while they completely forgot the other purpose of dams–to be able to hold back flood waters during a heavy rain event.

This story is similar to the Harvey flood in texas. The run off water flow through lake Conroe and down the San Jacinto river through houston on the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The dam on the lake Conroe is county controlled in a county outside of houston control. The flood was predicted 3-4 days in advance and the lake Conroe was kept at an average level. As the water rise they did not pre release water as they did not think the dan would fill and when they did release it to as our a dam break it was out of bank that about 1/3 of Houston city flooded.
The rivers all filled up with silt and it has taken 4 years to dredge them out. 125 billion in damage and 100 people died. 29 “ of rain got dumped in a few days. Many families may never recover.
Solution to problem was to dredge the River so that it gives the people downstream the headache! Go figure.

Climate alarmists unfortunately need people to die to justify action on climate change. So when you have fires in Australia or floods in Germany there is a subconscious lack of cognitive clarity to take actions to prevent loss of lives. The Australian bushfires were more lethal due to council inaction to reduce growth buildup in forests in the same way that inaction in Germany caused a higher death toll than necessary. It’s difficult to see climate change as an existential threat if data shows that deaths from climate related events have plunged over the years. That definately doesn’t suit the narrative.

“Although the heavy rains had been forecast days in advance, nothing was done to avert the inevitable destruction. Instead of taking responsibility, politicians are blaming climate change in a bid to shift attention away from their incompetence and gross negligence.”

There is another possibility – that failure to control the flooding was a deliberate act to promote climate change fear.

Examine one recent parallel – the Covid-19 alleged pandemic and its many frauds, used to create widespread fear and stringent population control:

Summary – from a public letter I sent to our Alberta government:

The Alberta Government’s management of Covid-19 has been an incompetent, deadly disaster:
1      There was no justification for the Covid-19 lockdown of under-65’s that started in March 2020 – the risk of Covid-19 death to 1Dec2020 for under-65’s was only 1 in 300,000.
2      The harm done by the lockdowns exceeded the harm done by the Covid-19 illness by approximately 10 to 100 times.
3      There was no increase in total deaths in Alberta or Canada to 30June2020 – no total death increase means NO deadly Covid-19 pandemic. Average age of death from Covid-19 in Alberta was 82.
4      The PCR tests were not a suitable method for estimating Covid-19 cases or basing policy. The resulting policies were entirely wrong and destructive.
5      There was no justification for the prevention of Covid-19 treatment with cheap, effective medicines like Ivermectin – as a result, lives were lost.
6      There was no justification for the widespread promotion of dangerous, relatively ineffective, costly Covid-19 injections by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. These experimental injections are causing enormous harm to those who receive them, should never be given to under-18’s, and in the long term could kill or seriously injure more people than the Covid-19 illness.
7      There is overwhelming evidence that the Covid-19 panic and lockdown was a politically-driven scam, and Alberta government officials were either fooled or deliberately collaborated with it – the government’s actions were either utterly incompetent or they were criminal.
8      I first formally notified the Alberta government of these Covid-19 facts on 3Sept2020 (below), and published the correct path forward months earlier, on 21&22March2020.
9      Alberta government officials “knew or should have known” that they were following a disastrous, destructive path as early as March 2020 and should have taken a completely different approach as summarized above, which would have saved billions of dollars and many lives.
10 NOTICES OF LIABILITY have already been served on all members of the European Parliament. Based on evidence of serious harm, THE GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA SHOULD IMMEDIATELY AND PERMANENTLY CEASE ALL COVID-19 INJECTIONS OF UNDER-18’S and should immediately cease all Covid-19 injections for all other Albertans pending an emergency safety review. The civil and criminal liability of all members of the Alberta Legislature, including all members of the Opposition who have failed to vigorously oppose these dangerous injections, is clear. All of you “knew or should have known” that you were mis-managing the Covid-19 response and causing great harm, and you are fully responsible for the enormous damage done to Alberta and Albertans.
__________________________

I suggest that if you’re going to have a real deadly pandemic, it’s got to kill people who would not have died anyway of other causes. While the authorities in New York State, England and a few other places did their best by returning infected Covid-19 patients to old folks homes to infect and kill other patients, it just was not enough. So they pumped up the death stats:
 
In the USA, the coding for Covid-19 deaths was changed in March 2020.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/faulty_covid_death_numbers_explained.html
 
Under the old coding, Covid-19 deaths were 1/16 of current reported totals, more like ~40,000 Covid deaths, not ~600,000. 40,000 flu deaths is a light flu year for the USA.
 
I nailed this fraud early, by comparing per capita deaths in Alberta with those in the USA – my ratio was ~10 times too high for the USA vs the 16 reported above.
 
The USA authorities’ Covid-19 stats are false and fraudulent. Huge numbers of deaths from other causes were falsely coded as Covid – 100% fraud.
___________________________

Lowering of water levels is routine operational procedure in the two dams upstream of Calgary on the Bow and Elbow rivers, and it works well most years. An examination should be launched to inquire why this was not done in Germany. Also, why were the populations not emergency-evacuated? This is also standard operating procedure.

Like the global warming fraud and the Covid-19 lockdown fraud, this needless loss-of-life in Germany has a strong aroma of the barnyard.

Scare the hell out of people and then get them to act against their own best interest – it worked for Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot – the great killers of the 20th Century.

The 21st Century has produced a whole new crop of monsters and their pack-of-lies.

Likely premeditated murder to create a further crisis.

The “griff” option for flood management

Exactly the same thing happened in Queensland, Australia about 10 years ago and the result was the same – dead people. Fortunately it was many less dead, but still the same stupidity.

Biologist about flood in the Ahr valley: “Put everything to the test to prevent further disasters”.

The Ahr actually has a relatively small catchment area of around 900 square kilometers. The basic problem is that the typical rock – Devonian shale with silicates – is almost completely impermeable to water. If there is heavy rain, it simply runs off into the valley. The side streams also run very steeply, so the water gets a high velocity. This makes the Ahr valley a kind of funnel, in which such a heavy rain forms large masses of water very quickly, which then forcefully find their way……

But surely this kind of geology exists elsewhere?

Just not in this extreme form. In the Eifel, clouds coming from the west like to empty for the first time. Now it was added that in the east a pronounced high-pressure area stood crosswise like a bar and led to the fact that the rain area always turned in a circle and emptied. The fact that in the Ahr valley the tributary streams are so steep and that the water almost completely drains away made the catastrophe complete. And then, of course, we have all the sins of the past.
…
So it’s not just about heavy rainfall per se, but also about the type of cultivation?

Vineyards are sometimes cultivated in the slope line for the sake of simplicity instead of across, which would be ecologically better. This also applies to fields in the highlands, where grassland, whose soil can store water well, has been replaced by corn for stable feeding. Add to that sealing – roads, commercial areas with impervious surfaces. These are all pieces of the puzzle. And then one interacts with the other – and a lot of water accumulates in a very short time.
…

However, as early as the 19th century, riverbed sills were installed and smaller weirs created to reduce the bedload of the Ahr. And in the 1920s, in response to the flood of 1910, large-scale rainwater retention basins were planned in the upper reaches of the Ahr, in the Trierbach, in the Wirftbachtal and in the Adenauer Bach.

What do such barriers accomplish?

They are technical barriers that would only be activated and closed during heavy rainfall, otherwise the water can flow freely. At the time, barriers with a capacity of 11.5 million cubic meters were planned. This could easily cap a flood wave. However, the plans have remained unrealised.
…

For example, it is also about the type of forestry, about the heat-induced death of spruce. In the Eifel – as in many other regions – people began to replace the natural oak-beech forests with the fast-growing and thus more profitable spruces as early as the 19th century. Today, this is taking revenge.

By what?

When spruces die, the root system also dies and the capacity of the soil to absorb water decreases. Planting spruces everywhere was one of the biggest mistakes. We are now paying dearly for it. In this respect, forestry is also very much in demand for flood protection.
Deepl translate, free version

German source

The dam controllers were told to prepare for the next global warming drought.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-26/brisbane-floods-wivenhoe-dam-class-action-win-payout-queensland/13196490

The lawsuit against the owners of the Wivenhoe dam was successful because there was a plan that the engineers didn’t follow.

Under Germany’s Water Act, Landers are required to have flood management plans.
These plans should outline who is responsible for flood mitigation.
But what is really needed is the actual manuals for each flood mitigation structure. Were they adhered to?

150 mm is 6 inches, although the duration is important.

An article I read last night said they had 3.1 inches in 12 hours. That part of Germany must not get much rain, because that’s child’s play.

Yup! Climate change. Oh wait, same thing happened in the Brisbane, Australia floods a few years ago.

Interesting report on status of German flood planning from 2013
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss2/art51/#Flood

Study of Ahr River Flooding
1804 was huge.
https://www.erdkunde.uni-bonn.de/archive/2014/reconstructing-peak-discharges-of-historic-floods-of-the-river-ahr-germany/at_download/attachment

Same happened in Queensland

Hard to have responsible people do the right job

If Google or Facebook doesnt tell them well they cant make the decision

We start with the assumption that no one wanted the floods to happen. Given the history of the last few years, I am not sure that is a valid assumption. I cannot help but wonder if the floods were intentional, as the resulting loss of live and property plays right into the fake climate change narrative. I have also heard that the powerful Greens in Germany have been thwarting all improvements to drainage and water management for well over a decade. If that is true, this horrible flood was inevitable.

A few years ago, I would never believe that any group of people could be so evil that they would actively plan to murder a large number of people and ruin countless lives just to further their agenda to gain more power, control and wealth. The evidence, however, is overwhelming that such people not only exist, but that they are not even trying to hide much anymore.

I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I am okay with that. I need some new conspiracy theories because all of my old ones have become conspiracy realities.

“for whatever reason”
obviously because climate change is too important to be left on its own.

I have operated dams and hydro plants in my career.. Other than spring run off dams are managed for the most head height, that generates the most electricity. Ponds are run down during the day to generate at peak times, and left to fill again at night during low demand. That the ponds were not drawn down even with predictions of heavy rains is no surprise. Profits take precedent over safety. But shortsightedness also loses money. High tail water cause turbines to motor and use power, and high tail waters cause damage to plants and equipment along with the threats to area residents. Also automation has eliminated the onsite operator, causing slower responses to threats to the dams.

Identical story with the Brisbane Australia Floods in 2011. Graphic videos of untethered yachts floating down the Brisbane river crashing into bridges. Govt blamed drought at the time on global warming and let the Wivenhoe dam go to 200% capacity (100% is for the Brisbane water supply, the rest is for mitigation). That dam was built specifically to mitigate floods that regularly affected Brisbane, and should never hold more than 50% of maximum design capacity. So when the rains that they said would never come, came…

Who do you blame? The cook? (“Under Siege”). Well, the next best thing – blame the engineers (operators). The (socialist) govt blamed the operators on the one hand for allowing the disaster, while not taking responsibility for implying “don’t release any precious water from the dam because of global warming”.

well like Qld in aus
I guess an enquiry and damages to be paid BY the dam management is in order

It is almost as if they wanted a “climate crisis”, knowing full well that people would die. All the better to frighten them about the “climate” and better control them. Now they can say “See? We told you. Now do you believe us?”

Is Germany already warned of another wave of heavy precipitation?

Dereliction of duty?
OR setting up crisis?

Plenty of CO2 around in 1784?

boppard-rhine-flood-marks.jpg (1024×768) (floodlist.com)

The laughable part – so it’s due to climate change. What’s that got to do with NOT lowering the level in the reservoirs weeks in advance? perhaps the politicians and dam managers don’t believe in climate change sufficiently to take preventive actions?

To make this even more absurd – my guess is they needed to get the dams topped up at all times in order to use them to balance out the failures of solar and wind…so to save the world from climate change they had to allow the valley to flood….

Much the same happened with the catastrophic Brisbane floods in 2011. The operators of the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams failed to release water from the already full dams before forecast heavy rains. To prevent failure of the dams the floodgates were opened too late, contributing heavily to the extent of flooding in Brisbane, as finally determined by the courts in 2019.

While not referenced in the Supreme Court of NSW decision, it’s more than likely the dam operators were reluctant to release water prior to the forecast rains owing to the years of scare-mongering about ‘permanent drought’ in Australia owing to ‘climate change’.

Same mistake was made in India: not lowering storage in advance when heavy rains predicted combined with allowing buildings in flood prone areas:
1) Chennai floods 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_South_India_floods#Improper_design_and_maintenance_of_drainage_systems
2) Kerala floods 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods#Analysis_by_Central_Water_Commission

Predictably “climate change” was used to save officials asses.

Whenever a disaster such as this one happens, there is always a lot of finger pointing and attempts to assign the blame. The people in charge often are accused of incompetence. Often there are grains of truth in these accusations. Also, however, underlying explanations include the kind of issues mentioned, such as cumulative effects of bad decision-making as development has taken place through the years. Jumping to conclusions is not helpful and assigning blame to the range of potential causes is not easy, and it requires an honest and systematic analysis of the event. One thing, however, is certain. Blaming a catastrophic weather event like this on “climate change” (meaning anthropogenic climate change or CO2 in the atmosphere) is simply a way of putting your head in the sand to ignore the possibility that there is real blame to be assigned to someone or something.