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.
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.