Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 18. July 2021
Officials left dams full to the brim at least 3 weeks long during a rainy period and then failed to undertake a controlled release even when 150 mm of rain were forecast 4 days before the floods.
Now they want to hide their gross incompetence and blame climate change.
Yesterday I posted how Germany’s flood disaster could have been prevented in large part, especially in terms of lives lost. The latest death toll has risen to over 150.
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.
Negligence worse than we thought
But it turns out the gross negligence may have been even worse than we thought: Dams constructed to regulate the flow of mountain streams and rivers had been left full for weeks before the disaster struck – despite Europe being stuck in a rainy period.
For illustration purpose only. Photo by: Hahnenkleer. Copyright: see here.
No controlled release to add dam volume
One independent journalist, Henning Rosenbusch, tweeted at Twitter a clip of a German citizen commenting to a “Welt” reporter:
Anwohner: “Mir ist aufgefallen, dass seit mind. 3 Wochen alle Talsperren voll bis oben hin waren und nicht kontrolliert abgelassen wurden.” pic.twitter.com/U4pc2HA1sg
— henning rosenbusch (@rosenbusch_) July 18, 2021
The resident in a flooded region tells the “Welt” reporter how every week he rides his mountain bike along dams that hold back waters in valleys. “I noticed that for the last 3 weeks all dams were full to the top – up to just 20 – 30 cm from the brim. These dams are there to hold back the water. Why didn’t they release some of the water in a controlled way much earlier? For me it’s unimageable. This whole thing should not have happened if there had been 10 or 20% more available volume in the dams.”
The reporter answered: “That’s criticism I’ve heard again and again today.”
Dereliction of duty?
Three weeks long dams were left full to the top even with long range forecasts (14 days) showing more and more rain on the way. It’s been a rainy summer, and there were no signs things would change soon.
Then 4 days before the catastrophe struck, meteorologists warned that up to 150 mm of rain was on the way. The filled dams were ticking time bombs that needed to be defused – and there was the opportunity to do so. But for whatever reason, nothing was undertaken by the authorities to release water behind the dams in a controlled manner to create capacity and slow the downstream flow.
Seems appropriate:
When the Levee Breaks (Remaster) – YouTube
Regards,
Bob
One of my favorites.
Or in this case, when they drove their Chevy to the levee, it wasn’t dry. Then they got bombed on whiskey and rye.
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).
And they will claim that they were “only following orders”
What.. too soon?
The real problem is that the meteorologists didn’t tell them what to do, they merely warned of a particular event. Climate Scientologists do it properly, and tell you how to run your government as well, you see.
It’s summer.
That person is on holiday in Spain.
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!
The ONLY way to beat CC is to force lifestyle restrictions on the common folk.
Any other method is destined to fail – say 98% of “internet” scientists!
/sarc off
That’s what puzzles me too! They’ve got departments chock full of experts, universities and institutes crammed with smart scientists, and they best they can do is acknowledge the damage and blame it on the all powerful and unpredictable climate change.
It is the same method Merkel used for the refugees flood a few years ago. She and her masters really hate Germans.
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!!
Yeah, but they get to blame Mother Nature’s Climate Change (is there a song in there?) so they don’t have to take any responsibility for the disasters that will follow.
By disasters, what if next fall and winter, we in the Northern Hemisphere have a very, very heavy duty winter with more than normal volumes of snow and freezing rain? That isn’t climate change, it’s just weather and weather is very volatile (as you know), so it’s very possible that it might happen everywhere in the north, with heavy snows in the Sahara and the Saudi peninsula. But they’ll sit on their backsides and blame an invisible non-entity called climate change for bad weather, and do nothing to prevent real disasters.
Were these reservoirs even used for hydropower?
In my region, the multi-use component of our flood control reservoirs is recreation.
We DO NOT leave them at full pool at the start of the rainy season!
It is stupid not to take any mitigation actions prior to a confidently predicted massive rain event. It takes a SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID to not have spare capacity in your safety system prior to the time period of the seasonally expected emergencies.
Maybe their most experienced hydrologist used the wrong pronoun and had to retire.
Maybe the most experienced hydrologist was a political appointee.
the insurance companies might have an opinion on that screwup?
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”.
Not all flooding is caused by human interference. The Mississippi River floods regularly. It’s the reason for dikes and levees built along the river’s path. but if the water volume coming south is way over the containment capacity of those flood diversions, it just turns into another Big Flood. The 1927 Missisiippi River flood was a bad one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
At least we have people who get right to work on it.
The dikes make the flooding worse because the water used to spread out, keeping the level down. Now it builds up much higher, overtops the levee, washes it out, and destroys towns. Much better to just explain to people what a flood plain is, why we need it there, and let people build there pay their own flood insurance.
For the first time, the Scab Lands were caused by floods and man had nothing to do with it. If you wish to modify to “some floods” I would agree.
Not so fast with floods are “human built environment”. I have walked a lot through Mesozoic basins and seen the record of a flood cycle killing many dinosaurs..The lesson here is that water officials are no smarter than dinosaurs.
Mr. Gaslioli- this is fabulous. It is a great quip to post EVERYWHERE.
And most dinosaurs’ brains were the size of walnuts.
And since most politicians’ brains have shrunk to something the size of a cough drop. that means that even dinosaurs had more ganglia in their brains than politicians.
For the record, volume or size of brain is less significant than quantity of ganglia in the brain itself. Corvids like ravens have more ganglia in their brains than humans do, and yet, our brain size is much larger than that of those birds.
They actually have a press in Germany? With real journalists? CBC would never report anything like that.
A good point but one that needs some fleshing out. I hadn’t followed events leading up to where the Germans are now, but it appears many in the public noticed the incongruity of the threat posed and the similarly apparent lack of action beforehand. Are those appearances accurate? If so, had the press asked early on what the authorities were to doing to mitigate the threat? Had the press asked why authorities weren’t lowering the reservoirs and demand answers?
Those are just two of many questions. The press had four days. if not more, to prod authorities to substantiate their lack of action. My point is that this is the self-proclaimed raison d’etre of the press — that government is bound to be filled with buffoons if left to it’s own devices and will act like buffoons if not held accountable, not just for the end result but all along the road to calamity.
If the press hadn’t been holding the authorities’ collective feet to the fire leading up to this disaster, then they are just as responsible as the authorities for the end result and publishing the public’s notice, now, as 20/20 foresight is more an effort to shift their part of the blame for buffoonish-ness onto the shoulders of government.
The press was too busy spinning the looming, and then actually happening, desaster into hysteric Climate Change Panic headlines. Anyone doing something else in this situation would have been ousted as extreme-right conspiracy theorist – more than one reputable paper has been thrown under the bus for daring to call out on similar matters, and by now, the remaining ones all sing the Green Litany more-or-less in unison (except a number of small-scale local papers that however are hardly read beyond the town or county where they are printed…)
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.
They do that here, too. See a load of water on the pavement, get out and look at it, then drive right into it and wonder why they are stranded.
O Griffio, Griffio, wherefore art thou Griffio?
You invoked part of the canon of Western Civilization.
I expect you to denounce yourself and immediately report to the re-education camp!
(I am pretty sure I will be joining you there shortly.)
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.
My thoughts exactly. They were so intent on saving the water for use as “green energy” they accepted the risks without really understanding them. So they blame “climate change” when it’s really “green energy voodoo”.
By all means blame the autorities. But don’t people know where they live?
No, people have no idea that they live in floodplains. Events that have not happened in living memory are deemed “unprecedented”.
I probably misunderstood your joke. But anyway the negligence of decision makers is twofold: permitting ongoing development in known floodplains & failure to adequately warn residents of pending floods. In general there is a falsehood in believing dams will somehow prevent flooding in narrow river valleys. History teaches us time and time again that dams will not protect against this type of event no matter what people want to believe – all dams can do in river valleys is to even out the flow a bit. When the whole system floods the dams are practically useless. Emptying the tiny reservoirs would have made no difference – people will try to blame the dam operators but this would be a false argument in this situation. I do recognise the optics is bad if the tiny reservoirs were not emptied, and so the dams might offer a convenient scapegoat if it comes to that. I see it’s already happening and if ministers are taking too much heat they might try to encourage a deflection of blame to the local operators. It happens every time, and it’s an effective argument because people do not understand riverine dams. Nor, it seems, do people understand that floodplains flood.
I’ve got the little FEMA odds table right here on my desk. It says that over a 30 year mortgage life span a home in the 100-year floodplain has a 39% chance of having the 100 year event hit.
My question is, if you have a 80 year old home in the mapped floodway/floodplain that has never been impacted by floodwaters, what are the odds are that the maps are incorrect?
My next question is, if you are given a 1000 homes in twenty differing basins that have not experienced a financial flooding impact over the life of the formally defined floodplains (about 50 years), what are the odds that the mapped regulatory floodplains are complete crap?
My last question is: why do some people want to directly impact others in a harmful manner, just to avoid a potential future indirect/tangential impact to themselves?
I don’t totally understand the premise of the questions. There isn’t much uncertainty where natural floodplains are. Surficial geology/topography tells the story. If you have fluvial deposits in a flat valley bottom with a meandering river in the middle it’s a riverine floodplain. Crunching numbers like that is for insurance agents. Nature doesn’t care about statistical frequency constructs we’ve devised for rainfall. The risk tolerance is up to local planning committees but this decision making isn’t usually communicated to landowners. Once a development is approved nobody will think of the risk again. We should only hope town have the wherewithal to warn residents when their statistical bet has failed and a catastrophic flood is imminent.
Yes thats right. ordinary people have little to no understanding of flooding and flood levels even when living next to stream/river.
Even in well drained urban areas the pipelines are built for a say 1 in 15 or 20 yr recurrence. Anything more than that and it will fill the road/backyard/basement or a little brook will become a raging torrent for a few hours
You can build in flood plains if you elevate the house on columns as they do in many other places in the world. It is not complicated. If you are going to have floods, building accordingly. That’s all.
might work in marshes, coastal areas, and lower reaches/river deltas. narrow valleys running downhill with concentrated flow will erode the foundations of your stilts. But it’s just my opinion.
JCM, you may be right, yet you have failed to quantify your assertion.
So put some numbers on the “tiny reservoirs” and the volume of runoff.
Because it appears obvious that if multiple reservoirs in a catch basin were inches from full, and a heavy rain on all ready saturated ground predicted, floods would very likely result.
So without seeing real numbers I see no reason to accept your assertion.
Also consider that the higher and longer a dam overflows, the more likely you are to have dam failures, and the more likely you are to have less time and warning before floods result.
These are small U shaped valleys of glacial origin. They are nothing like the great rivers of the southern USA or Australia with great plains for endless flood storage behind dams that some might be envisioning. The hydraulics is straightforward. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ahr/@50.4656006,6.9512367,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipNtCrDTHlxgFS-lEkHt1krN1x9OrMePtdwtFr1R!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNtCrDTHlxgFS-lEkHt1krN1x9OrMePtdwtFr1R%3Dw203-h135-k-no!7i3888!8i2592!4m7!3m6!1s0x47bef1191ad419f7:0x9735ef527fac025b!8m2!3d50.4656006!4d6.9512367!14m1!1BCgIgAQ
The city of Hagen was flooded for the last time in 1961, well “within living memory”, with just seven or eight inches lower than this year’s top level. In other words, similar damages then (my wife’s parents remember well from first-hand experience), but the press will only report that this year’s flood was “higher than ever before”. Well, technically it may have been, but only by a couple inches that made no difference for the majority of people and houses affected.
Remember, climate measurements to the 0.01 unit are all important!
So, if nothing else, the “ higher then ever before” could have been human error caused by the reservoirs being left
“fuller then ever before” before a predicted heavy rain event.
Modern Germans have been trained to wait for those in authority to tell them what to do.
Jawohl!
Apparently they do have a national flood warning system (thats a clue that its not uncommon).
This story in WSJ talks about how the meteorologists predicted the extreme weather – for that small area- in advance, but then….
‘The alarming forecast, which soon proved to be accurate, was picked up by the agency’s on-duty meteorologist who promptly triggered the country’s sophisticated flood alert system at 6 a.m., notifying at once the government, the emergency services, the police and key media about the looming catastrophe”.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-opposition-politicians-blame-government-for-ignoring-flood-warnings-11626694101
The large rivers going through Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai or Wuhan have riverbanks up to 400-500 meters wide. They are used for recreational purposes with no permanent structures apart from some tables and benches made of concrete. When the 300 mm rain per hour typhoon strikes they are flooded, but people live safely behind the walls of the riverbanks.
well, in theory yes. But I have seen horrible videos of dam breaks coming out of china, despite the Great Internet Wall
In the flooded area, there are (or now rather were) several whole villages, train lines and highways within 500 meters of riverbanks. Not all of them _large_ rivers, but of course that made them, if anything, _more_ prone to swelling immensely than the big streams, because the short-term amount added by the rain was huge compared to their usual water volume.
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
Sorry MG. No.
There were/are no significant dams or water control measures above the town of Cockermouth (the Cumbria 2009 flood)
That flood was caused by a double whammy:
Put those two together= lotsa rain falling onto little more than bare rock and the streams, becks, sykes and rivers simply turned into something akin the waste-pipe below your toilet when you flush it.
Nobody and nothing downstream had a chance.
Not even a lawyer
yes. The lawyer would get fees for a case with almost no chance of success against the people who operate water supply reservoirs….thats what insurance for flood damage is for …let me guess these claimants had no insurance
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…
The simplified bureaucratic liberal’s playbook.
They’re hoping someone like Joshua or Moses will come along and part the waters, so that they don’t have to do anything, but can take credit for it all.
Always remember that matzo was the original hardtack.
And it is good with peanut butter and grape jam. 🙂
….. and they’re not beyond manslaughtering a few plebs either to keep the phony crisis going.
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.
Me neither. The added bonus of a bit of depopulation too.
Can’t Waste that FREE ENERGY.
>> 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.
The concept of water management suggests that somebody is, well, managing. Controlling the water level in an impound area is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise. What happened last year has no bearing on what’s happening in the next 4 days.
Flood control dams should be as a design feature be normally empty as they have a restricted outlet to allow the water out over a week or month as appropriate.
If the dam is full and its not just had a major flood its not flood control its water storage for a range of reasons..often because that brings in money. Flood control doesnt bring in any money
In a world of infinite resources, that might make sense. Maybe. However, trains to nowhere in California notwithstanding, no politician could survive by banging this drum. The only way you can get a dam approved is showing multiple uses whose benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
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.
She’s retiring. Election in September
With the Greens and the Socialists already standing in line to take over. Merkel seems a minor problem in comparison to all available alternatives….
The Federal Government there isnt responsible for local water supply- flood control . They have states and districts who handle that. There is no US style Army Corps of Engineers
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?
The thing to aim for, broadest sense, is “Buck Passing”
i.e. The avoidance of responsibility coupled with mendacity.
In olden days folks would find their heads on spikes for less.
As a measure of how crazy things really are nowadays, Mr Trump found his head on a (metaphorical) spike exactly because he was honest and didn’t pass the buck.
None of us would trust them to baby-sit our pet bunny-rabbit yet here they are permanently installed in Government.
what went so badly wrong
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
“Living memory”. Correct. It’s called a cycle.
You are asserting without any evidence that climate change is the reason for the record-breaking rainfall.
If I flip a coin 100 times and my longest string of “heads” is four, then that constitutes the existing record.
In my subsequent 100 flips, if I achieve a new record of six “heads” in a row, is it your argument that the coin has now somehow become biased towards “heads”?
The longer you flip coins, the more chance of a new record streak of heads or tails, yet the more decimals to which your 50:50 average is certain.
Climate= heavy rain proofStill 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.
If the question is about weather better ask meteorologists.
Given that this event far, far exceeded anything in living memory and beyond
Beyond is wrong, here was linked in the yeasterday thread a lot of historical summer floods of the region.
The mere existence of historic flood events in the region does not tell us anything about how this most recent event compares. My understanding is that in some areas, the amount of rainfall amounted to a 1:1000 year event. I agree with you that I’ve not seen an actual attribution study published on this rainfall event yet, and much of the linkage to climate change seems to be speculative.
Yeah right, w_r, the attribution report was written last year or something, but it needs to be “seasoned” for a week or so to make it look like actual analysis was done.
Rest assured that all the speculation will be confirmed, and it will be worse than we thought.
griff says “ huge area of affect”. Hum, how huge? What percentage of the planet did this “huge” area cover? Was it 1/1000th of the planet? Was it 1/5000th of the planet. If the earth has say two thousand areas that large, how many one in a thousand year events will the earth have each year? How many “huge” events happen, and go unnoticed, as people don’t live in the “huge” area?
And no doubt some alarmist publication will call this a one in thousand year event! Now these do happen of course. Yet many such claims have, on closer examination, proved to be two or three times a century events.
Alarmist, unable to show a historical global increase in such events, now simply claim them as CAGW, sans any science to demonstrate that.
More hyperbole with no evidence … mere speculation, bad science and hand waving. There is no evidence of “climate change”, but there’s one thing that is certain; they built those flood control dams for a reason.
Guess what that reason was.
Hydropower?
I think “flood control dams” has a self-revealing purpose…
“Given that this event far, far exceeded anything in living memory and beyond, perhaps the officials underestimated the possible effects.”
So, you’re suggesting that those officials are not taking “climate change” seriously? . . Hmm, you might be on to something, Gríma ; )
Still not answering any questions there, griff
The 1910 Ahr flood is just outside “living memory” griff
You’re just outright lying now, Griff.
Oh and for the record, I used to live near whaley bridge. The dam isn’t inadequate because of climate change, it’s in adequate because it wasn’t maintained for decades and has been expected to serve a massively increased population from when it was built.
griff, you can’t even remember that we were just recently being told that Germany is in drought because of climate change. Of course there are those who suspect you’re a chatbot, so no relevance to “living memory” I guess.
So, in which time period would you prefer to live your life?
[__] Benign low CO2 1675-1750
[__] “Dangerous” CO2 1950-2025
[__] Really nice CO2 1325-1345
“and the reason for the rainfall: climate change.”
I guess Griff thinks if he repeats this enough times, it will become true.
Griff, you are what Dick Cheney would call a “bitter clinger”. In the face of what appears to be an heinious bureaucratic F-UP(because???), you are still clinging to “climate change”.
“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”
Solar panels and wind turbines are out then?
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.
That’s what seemingly happened in Brisbane, Australia ten years ago—the bigshots overseeing the dam had been convinced by climate change alarmist Flannery that the region was in for endless droughts, so they waited until too late to release water from the reservoir, despite predictions of heavy rain, and even when the rain was falling.
Yes, I thought of Wivenhoe Dam as soon as I saw the headline for this article.
That was quite avoidable, because the dam was built primarily for flood mitigation but held above “full” even with heavy rain forecast.
Similarly, there was little or no pre-release from an almost full Warragamba Dam (Sydney) earlier this year despite forecast heavy rainfall. The official claim was that even if the reservoir was empty, there wasn’t sufficient capacity to hold all the water. This, of course, ignores the point that dams allow greater control over flow rates, thus reducing the peaks i.e. mitigation rather than prevention.
Exactly so. Even after nearly non-stop rain all through April in my area, the news wouldn’t stop blathering on about forests dying and drinking water becoming scarce because it is STILL TOO DRY. I suppose all reservoirs were at least half-filled even then, and a lot of rain has been coming down since, with just a few unusually brief spells of summer heat (and even those punctuated by thunderstorms…)
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.
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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.
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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.
Popular idiom: “To make an omelet you have to break eggs.”
The omelet is the Great Reset – a global Marxist dictatorship.
You, good people, are the eggs.
But not you, because it doesn’t work through tinfoil right?
The tin foil hat “slide” is getting old, it seems to me, since there have been public releases of official documents detailing plans to stage various forms of “false flag” events, which would obviously include many “broken eggs”.
(for example from the WIKI)
“Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against American citizens that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets,[2] blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas,[2] hijacking planes to be shot down or given the appearance of being shot down,[2] blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.[3] The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.[4][5][6]…”
It is just plain naive to think power magically stopped corrupting humans (and thus human organizations) at some arbitrary point in time, so acting like it’s crazy to believe false attribution events can occur at any time, merely marks the mocker as either very uninformed or complicit in some sense, as far as I’m concerned anyway.
Mmmm, look what the unimaginably wealthy producers of world’s most valuable commodity and their BAU buddies have done to you lot – without you even realising it. Should have kept your tin foil hat on I say.
I seem to have misplaced my Troll decoder ring ; ) so it took me a while to guess what you’re trying to excuse the old “tinfoil hat” cliché with, and my guess is; A backhanded admission that the people in power might be “breaking some eggs”, but, it’s O.K. because Big Oil . . ??
Well, you managed to persuade me (tentatively) that you’re not “complicit in some sense” . . but just a relatively harmless victim of simplistic “leftist” bullshit, striking out at those who suggest it’s diversionary bullshit, employed by hyper-wealthy criminal “elites”.
(and I’m wounded to the quick ; )
Loydo is a bot, crudely programmed by the IPCC and the WEF.
AI is still in its infancy – long on the A (Artificial) and short on the I (Intelligence).
We should be nicer to Loydo.
– SPCM (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Machines)
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.
Interesting little factoid about the Queensland Wivenhoe dam:
In the middle of the downpour in Queensland, the dam got too full. As a consequence, the dam operator had to release more water from the dam than was flowing into it – so as to lower the water level in the dam.
This happened at the peak of the flood. So the Wivenhoe dam, meant to protect from flooding, actually was mismanaged so grossly, it actually contributed to raise the peak flood level above and beyond what it would naturally have been. Potentially by quite a bit.
The question I have:
Did they have to do the same in Germany? With the dam almost full, and then a downpour like this, it is likely to be the case they had a similar scenario.
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
Thx, very interestng !
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.
Nah, that’s a Lewadowski conspiracy.
When in the history of mankind were people not conspiring? The demonization of ‘conspiracy’ is precisely what those who conspire would want!
The gears of the “Climate Crisis” industry can, and do operate well on their own, without conspiracy, which would be extremely difficult to manage in secrecy anyway. It is a well-oiled machine.
“for whatever reason”
obviously because climate change is too important to be left on its own.
Rather like pretending to test inexpensive treatments for the current virus but designing the tests so they can’t help but fail.
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.
Yes but were the dams in question hydroelectric dams? I haven’t seen any indication of that, rather they have been labeled “flood control” dams, which suggests that the neglect to draw down the water level had nothing to do with “profits.”
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)
Big dirty buses in Australia in year 1853??
Gundagai Floods 1852 – FloodList
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.