Germany: 9 Killed, Dozens Missing in Heavy Rainfall

Heavy rains and floods lashing western Germany left nine people dead and around 50 missings, police announced on Thursday.

A police spokesman in the city of Koblenz revealed that "A lot of the people" reported missing were on the roofs of houses that were swept away by floods in the municipality of Schuld.

Schuld is, in a region of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia worst hit by the storms which have caused rivers to burst their banks.

Videos on social media showed streets in the city filled with knee-high water and others buried by landslides.

A fallen tree trapped a woman in the town of Mettmann, and responders had to hold her head up to keep her from drowning in the rising flood until firefighters could free her.

Furthermore, residents in nearby Erkrath were warned not to shower or use their washers as the rain had overloaded the local sewage system.

In Duesseldorf, city authorities called on residents in the city’s Grafenberg district to leave their homes Wednesday because of potential flooding.

Hof County in Bavaria issued a disaster alert late Tuesday as basements filled with water, trees were uprooted, and some areas lost power overnight.

Germany’s DWD weather service pointed out that the region saw 80 liters (more than 21 gallons) of rain per square meter in the space of 12 hours.

On his part, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert described the images from regions hardest hit by flooding as “terrible.”

“Even though not every event, not every flooding or local incident, is related to climate change, many scientists tell us that the frequency, the intensity and the regularity with which this happens is a consequence of climate change,” Seibert said.