‘Like a bomb went off ' Deluge that has changed lives for ever

‘It looks like a bomb went off. Everything’s destroyed. There’s nothing left of the city centre,” said Michaela Wolff, a winemaker from one of the German towns worst hit by last week’s catastrophic flooding.

-  Courtney Tenz COLOGNE

Her family vineyard and guesthouse, the Weingut Sonnenberg, would normally be filled with tourists descending the red wine trail. At the weekend it was filled with desperate refugees from homes destroyed when the Ahr burst its banks last Wednesday after days of heavy rain.

“We have water and we have electricity. The gas has been shut off, but we have more than most,” she said. “It’s chaotic, absolutely chaotic.”

Floods across western Germany and Belgium caused by a near-stationary low-pressure weather system have killed at least 160 people, and the worst-hit area is the Ahrweiler district, which includes Wolf’s town of Bad Neuenahr.

As of last weekend, 98 deaths had been confirmed there, among them 12 in a home for disabled people. Many more people are missing and the toll is expected to rise.

Thousands have also been made homeless, and the economic fallout from lost homes and businesses and the cost of repairing infrastructure is likely to run to billions.

Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler is a historic spa town surrounded by picturesque vineyards and populated by many small-scale vintners. Days of unrelenting rain sent a wave of water several feet high down the Ahr, which divides the town in two.

The roads were left buried in water and mud, cars were tossed on their sides in the square, and parts of buildings were swept away. One house was left gaping open to the street as if a bomb had blown away its front wall.