The Belgian Defense Force said it had deployed helicopters and personnel to assist with rescue and recovery efforts amid reports that the river was expected to rise several feet, threatening a dam.
In the Netherlands, soldiers were sent to help with evacuations in Limburg Province, where at least one nursing home had to be cleared, according to the Dutch news outlet NU.nl.
Intense rain in Switzerland led the country’s weather service to warn on Thursday that flooding would worsen in the coming days. It said there was a high risk of flooding on Lake Biel, Lake Thun and Lake Lucerne, and noted the potential for landslides.
The leader of Friends of the Earth Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia linked the severe flooding in the region to what he said were failed policies by lawmakers in charge of the state. The impact of climate change is one of the issues that has been fiercely debated in Germany before the September elections in which the Greens party is in the running for second place, behind Mr. Laschet’s conservative Christian Democrats.
“The catastrophic results of the heavy rain in the past few days are largely homemade,” said Holger Sticht, who heads the regional chapter and blamed lawmakers and industry for building in floodplains and woodlands. “We urgently need to change course.”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/world/europe/flooding-germany-belgium-switzerland-netherlands.html
Comments