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.
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.
__________________________
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.
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?”