Germany has just experienced 48 hours of torrential rain.
A firefighter died during operations to evacuate residents trapped by floods in southern Germany, where thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.
This 42-year-old man was on board a boat which capsized Saturday evening with four firefighters on board. His body was found on Sunday morning, said a spokesperson for Pfaffenbach an der Ilm, in Bavaria, about fifty kilometers north of Munich. Around 3,000 people had to be evacuated in various municipalities in southern Germany due to flooding caused by heavy rains. Another firefighter is missing.
Wir sind den Rettungskräften und Helfern, die an vielen Orten gegen die Folgen des Hochwassers kämpfen, zu Dank und Respekt verpflichtet.
Der Tod eines Feuerwehrmanns in Pfaffenhofen macht mich betroffen. Meine Gedanken sind bei seinen Angehörigen und Kolleginnen und Kollegen.
— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) https://twitter.com/Bundeskanzler/status/1797182758822801798?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Rail traffic was also severely disrupted. No trains ran on the Munich-Bregenz-Zurich line and on the Stuttgart-Ulm-Augsburg-Munich line, Deutsche Bahn said. As for mobile phone networks and electricity, cuts affected several localities.
Nearly a thousand people had to leave their homes in the Lake Constance region. In Fischach, in the Augsburg district, several people had to leave their homes and some had to be evacuated by helicopter, according to local authorities, highlights The Huffington Post. A dike and a dam gave way, the Schmutter River burst its banks and roads were flooded.
