Dozens dead and hundreds missing in European flood disaster

Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands devastated by once-in-a-lifetime flooding

Firefighters and rescue crews place sandbags along the banks of the Duessel river, Germany. EPA

More than 100 people have died and hundreds are missing after major flooding devastated parts of western Europe.

The hardest hit areas were in western Germany, where most of the deaths were reported. The German Army was sent to help stranded residents and is continuing to search for hundreds of missing people.

"I fear that we will only see the full extent of the disaster in the coming days," Chancellor Angela Merkel said from Washington, where she met US President Joe Biden.

As floodwaters began to ebb, residents in the worst affected areas examined what was left of their homes and neighbourhoods.

Police in the western city of Koblenz on Thursday said four people died in Ahrweiler county and about 50 were trapped on the roofs of their houses awaiting rescue.

Six houses collapsed in the village of Schuld. “Many people have been reported missing to us,” police said.

Around 1,000 German soldiers were deployed to help with rescue operations and rubble-clearing in affected towns and villages.

Streets and houses under water, overturned cars and uprooted trees were seen once the floodwaters started to recede, while some districts were cut off by landslides.

The floods disrupted rail, road and river transport in Germany's most populous region.

The German Weather Service issued an extreme weather warning for parts of three western states, while Hagen, a city of 180,000, declared a state of emergency after the Volme river burst its banks.

The city's crisis team told everyone who lived near the river to move to higher ground immediately, public broadcaster WDR reported.

“We see this kind of situation only in winter ordinarily,” Bernd Mehlig, an environment official from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most affected region, told WDR.

“Something like this, with this intensity, is completely unusual in summer.”

Parts of Hagen were described as isolated by high waters and all but inaccessible.

Soldiers had to clear some areas of the city.

Residents were also told to leave one district of regional capital Duesseldorf, a major business centre.

A care home for the elderly in Hagen was evacuated, while across the region firemen were busy pumping out hundreds of cellars. In one hospital, floodwater caused lifts to fail.

Among those who died was a fireman who lost his footing and was swept away, authorities told WDR. Police also said one man, 82, died after a fall in his flooded basement in the western city of Wuppertal.

Flooding extended beyond the borders of Germany into neighbouring countries.

In Liege, the main city in eastern Belgium, more than 21,000 people were without power after the Meuse river burst its banks and spilled into the heart of the city. Police urged citizens to take precautionary measures.

Authorities in the southern Dutch town of Valkenburg, close to the German and Belgian borders, evacuated a care home and hospice overnight amid flooding that turned the tourist town’s main street into a river, Dutch media reported.

The Dutch government sent 70 troops to the southern province of Limburg to help with tasks including transporting evacuees and filling sandbags, as rivers burst their banks. There were no reports of injuries linked to flooding in the Netherlands.

Unusually intense rains inundated parts of north-east France this week, uprooting trees and forcing the closure of dozens of roads. A train route to Luxembourg was disrupted and firefighters evacuated dozens of homes near the Luxembourg and German border, and in the Marne region, broadcaster France Bleu said.

The equivalent of two months' of rain fell on some areas in two days, the French national weather service said. With the ground already saturated, the service forecast more downpours and issued flood warnings for 10 regions.

Germans will vote in September to choose a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the extreme weather could heighten awareness of global warming.

That could be a boon for the Greens, who are running second to Mrs Merkel's Christian conservatives.