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At least 120 people have died and hundreds more in western Europe are unaccounted for after a number of the worst flooding in decades.
Record rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks, devastating the region.
In Germany, where the price now stands at over 100, Chancellor Angela Merkel involved a determined battle against global climate change .
Belgian media is reporting 22 deaths there. Netherlands , Luxembourg and Switzerland also are affected.
In Germany, the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia were the worst-hit.
Scientists have repeatedly warned that human-induced global climate change would bring pulses of utmost rainfall like this one.
In the western German district of Ahrweiler, up to 1,300 people are unaccounted for, the authorities say. A spokeswoman for the government said mobile networks had been put out of action, making it impossible to contact many of us .
The village of Schuld (population 700) was almost entirely destroyed. within the town of Erfstadt-Blessem, near Cologne, floodwaters caused a row of homes to collapse. Local authorities said they were receiving emergency calls from people trapped by floodwater but rescue was in many cases impossible .
We met an elderly man trying to urge into a village which was about destroyed. His grandchildren were there, he said, but he couldn’t line up of their parents.
Even the authorities say they do not know needless to say what percentage people are missing. there’s no phone signal in much of the region, making communication about impossible. But the price is predicted to rise today and with every hour that passes the magnitude of this disaster becomes ever clearer.
All along the River Ahr there are flooded homes, broken bridges, the twisted remains of campsites and caravan parks. for several of the dazed people we met surveying the damage here, it’s almost impossible to imagine clearing up and starting again.
Speaking during a gathering with US President Joe Biden in Washington DC, Mrs Merkel expressed her “deepest condolences” and pledge government support for the rescue efforts.
The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia said it had been impossible to offer a transparent number of casualties, adding that a lot of people had “lost everything”.
In Belgium, dramatic footage of the floods showed cars being caught in a frenzy along a street within the city of Verviers. A curfew was in situ overnight due to the danger of looting.
The Meuse river, which flows through the town , stabilised on Friday morning, with small overflows in some areas. Officials also are concerned that a dam bridge within the area may collapse and urged people to assist one another .
Scientists have condemned politicians for failing to guard their citizens from extreme weather events like the floods in northern Europe and therefore the US heat dome.
They have been predicting for years that summer rainfall and heatwaves would become more intense thanks to human-induced global climate change .
Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading, said: “The deaths and destruction across Europe as a results of flooding may be a tragedy that ought to are avoided.
“Forecasters issued alerts early within the week, and yet the warnings weren’t taken seriously enough and preparations were inadequate.
“The incontrovertible fact that other parts of the hemisphere are currently suffering record-breaking heatwaves and fires should function a reminder of just what proportion more dangerous our weather could become in an ever-warmer world.”
Scientists say governments must both cut the CO2 emissions that are fuelling extreme events, AND steel oneself against more extreme weather.
Yet within the UK – hit by severe flooding on Monday – the government’s advisory global climate change committee recently told ministers the state was even worse prepared for extreme weather than it had been five years ago.
It said the govt was keeping only a fifth of its pledges to chop emissions.
And only in the week the united kingdom government told folks that they do not got to reduce flying because technology will solve the emissions problem – a notion that the majority experts consider a big gamble .
In the Netherlands, the town of Valkenburg was one among the worst affected, where flooding forced the evacuation of several nursing homes.
Households have built makeshift dikes out of shopping bags crammed with sand and a bridge has collapsed. Fire crews are pumping water from beneath the toppled slabs of concrete to access a gas pipe and stem a leak.
The country has reported no casualties but thousands of individuals in towns and villages along the Meuse river are urged to go away their houses quickly.
In the Dutch city of Maastricht, 10,000 people were ordered to evacuate.
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