- Thousands of pages on disaster - Committee report
Sharp criticism from the opposition, different tones from the traffic light coalition - the final report of the parliamentary inquiry committee on the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley has met with a mixed response. While representatives of the opposition are taking the role of the state government and lower authorities to task for the night of the flood on July 14/15 and afterwards, elsewhere the extraordinary nature of the flood is emphasized. The governing factions point to the shortcomings of a former district administrator.
What happened on the night of July 14/15, 2021, on the Ahr?
Extreme heavy rain caused flood waves in various parts of Rhineland-Palatinate. The idyllic Ahr Valley was particularly hard hit. 135 people died there in one of the worst disasters in the Federal Republic of Germany. One person is still missing. At least 766 people were injured, many of whom are traumatized.
The flood also submerged parts of the Eifel - one person died. The district of Ehrang in Trier was flooded, and Kordel in the district of Trier-Saarburg was under water. Neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia was also affected. Tens of thousands of houses in the Ahr Valley and the railway line were destroyed or severely damaged, and roads and bridges were washed away. Many buildings are still empty, being demolished, or being rebuilt.
What was the focus of the committee's work?
The committee was to find out which information and forecasts were available from July 10 to 13, 2021, and which decisions were made by the state government, lower authorities, and other public institutions from July 14 to 15. It also looked at how the management of the disaster from July 16 to the appointment of a state government commissioner on August 6, 2021, was organized and implemented. This involved the work of the Ahrweiler district, the authority responsible for disaster control (ADD), the Ministry of the Environment, and the subordinate State Office for the Environment.
How many times did the investigative committee meet?
It was convened at the initiative of the CDU and has met 47 times or 294 hours since October three years ago. About 40 hours were not public. 226 witnesses were heard, some multiple times. There were also 23 experts, three of whom were heard three times each.
More than a million electronic files with a total of around 560 gigabytes were available to the committee. More than 7,000 protocol pages were produced.
Why is the opposition calling for the resignation of Linnertz and Manz?
In essence, the opposition sees major shortcomings in Environmental State Secretary Erwin Manz (Greens) and ADD President Thomas Linnertz. The spokesman for the Free Voters, Stephan Wefelscheid, speaks of a "failure of state structures in the broader sense" in the days before, during, and after the flood. Human error played a significant role in missed warnings and failed evacuations. The then Minister of the Environment, Anne Spiegel (Greens), and the then Ahr district administrator, Jürgen Pföhler (CDU), are no longer in office, but Linnertz and Manz are, and they have not yet taken responsibility for their mistakes, shortcomings, and derelictions of duty.
The three CDU representatives on the committee, Dirk Herber, Marcus Klein, and Anette Moesta, speak of "multiple and detailed proven incapacity" in the cases of Manz and Linnertz. "That both gentlemen are still in office is a heavy ignorance towards the people of our country and especially towards the many victims in the Ahr valley." AfD faction leader Jan Bollinger identifies the two, along with the resigned ministers, as those who have particularly exacerbated the disaster through their misconduct. "They should therefore be dismissed," said Bollinger.
What do the traffic light factions say?
In their assessment, the failure of former district administrator Pföhler ran like a red thread through the committee, as written by the faction leaders Nico Steinbach (SPD), Carl-Bernhard von Heusinger (Greens), and Philipp Fernis (FDP) in a joint statement. They accuse him of inadequate preparation, the failure to establish an administrative staff, his lack of availability as the highest responsible disaster protector in the acute situation, the delegation of responsibility, and the delayed warning of the population.
Furthermore, the traffic light representatives emphasize that the flood disaster was a "unique event in its scope and course and therefore not foreseeable." The terrible consequences were exacerbated by a constellation of various specific factors, including meteorological and geological ones, in the Ahr valley.
What has become of the investigations against the district administrator?
The public prosecutor's office in Koblenz has suspended the criminal proceedings against the former district administrator Jürgen Pföhler (CDU) and one of his close associates from the crisis staff after around two and a half years in mid-April 2024. This included charges of negligent homicide by omission. The prosecution authority concluded, among other things, that it was an extraordinary natural disaster whose extreme extent was not concretely foreseeable for the responsible parties of the district of Ahrweiler. Survivors of the victims want to achieve the resumption of the investigations with the help of expert opinions. The General Prosecutor's Office will decide on this.
The chairman of the Free Voters faction in the U-Ausschuss, Wefelscheid, explicitly criticizes the public prosecutor's office. He had expected a different cooperation with the authority. The committee had always and comprehensively supplied the authority with findings, "unfortunately, this was not always the case in return, in my opinion."
What consequences has the state government drawn?
The then ministers of the environment Anne Spiegel and interior Lewentz (SPD) resigned for different reasons in connection with the processing of the disaster. In Spiegel's case - already federal minister for families - it was about the handling of a family holiday in France ten days after the disaster in April 2022. Lewentz came increasingly under pressure during the processing of the disaster in the U-Ausschuss, also because police documents and videos of the flood night only appeared late. He resigned in October 2022 with the justification: "Today, I take political responsibility for the mistakes made in my area of responsibility."
The former minister-president Malu Dreyer (SPD), who withdrew from her office for other reasons in June 2024 ("force goes out"), had repeatedly deeply regretted the flood disaster and the associated suffering and expressed her deep sympathy to the people. She spoke of a "turning point" - and of a natural disaster, and therefore did not formally apologize, which many criticize.
Your successor Alexander Schweitzer (SPD) has made the rebuilding of the Ahr Valley one of his key priorities. Shortly after his inauguration, on the third anniversary of the disaster, he was in the region.
As a result, disaster protection is being reorganized, with a situation center for civil protection being established in Koblenz. This will be the core of the new State Office for Fire and Disaster Control.
The opposition, specifically Free Voters spokesman Stephan Wefelscheid, is callingly for the resignation of Environmental State Secretary Erwin Manz and ADD President Thomas Linnertz due to their perceived mistakes and derelictions of duty during the flood disaster, despite not being directly responsible for the disaster as former Minister of the Environment Anne Spiegel and former Ahr district administrator Jürgen Pfoehler are no longer in office.
The traffic light factions, led by Nico Steinbach (SPD), Carl-Bernhard von Heusinger (Greens), and Philipp Fernis (FDP), have focused their criticism on the former district administrator Pfoehler, with accusations of inadequate preparation, lack of staff, delegation of responsibility, and delayed warning of the population, but also emphasize that the flood disaster was a unique event not foreseeable in its scope and course.
