Elections loom, but the Ahr valley has little interest

Two months after 133 people died in floods, residents of stricken western German region say they feel abandoned by politicians

- Kate Connolly

When she heard on the radio just weeks after floods had devastated her family-run restaurant and her hometown that German authorities no longer classed it as a disaster zone, Paddy Amanatidis felt like she had been punched in the stomach.

“It’s hard to be told that everything is supposedly OK when you have no electricity, no clean water, no heating,” she said. It is now almost two months since western Germany experienced catastrophic flooding after the River Ahr – a tributary of the Rhine – rose by seven metres and enveloped everything as it spread far beyond its banks. At least 133 people died in the Ahr valley alone, and about 50 more elsewhere.

Amanatidis recently stood in the courtyard of her restaurant, La Perla, in the town of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, coordinating efforts by the staff, friends and family to build a new patio.

“For the time being we’re mixing concrete rather than pizza dough,” she joked. They have removed 40 tonnes of detritus from the restaurant. “Mud, sludge and rubble, full of faecal matter. I came out in a rash. I and my sister wept when we realised we couldn’t rescue the pizza oven that my father installed 40 years ago.”