"It happened so fast, you couldn't save anything but yourself," she recounted. She was stuck upstairs in the apartment with her son until noon the following day. Rescue workers arrived the next day, but no one helped them, she recalled. "My son looked up at the sky at one point and said, 'Mom, I think it's going to start raining again soon.' We have to get out of here."

Then she packed her things and left the apartment along with her son, even though the water was still filling the parking lot. Thinking about that night and the hours of feeling helpless in her apartment, the restaurant owner started to weep again. The German Armed Forces and the police had only been on the scene since Monday. Relatives and many volunteers had already come much earlier to support them, she says. They did not even have shovels at the beginning, adds Mendor-Krasniqi.

"It's like wartime"

"It's like wartime, no, it's worse than war. The water came way too fast. It took us all by surprise," describes Aargon Ademaj, who knows what war is from his home country of Kosovo. Access roads were blocked. Help did not come all weekend. "Nobody came. We were all alone," says Tom Heine. He and his wife had already experienced a lot during their work for the Federal Criminal Police Office and knew that one should never give up. But what the couple experienced on Wednesday night is something they will never forget.

Using lamps, Heine attempted to send help signals to the outside, but without success. From the window, he could see his neighbor's house. He saw the man standing in the window and the water chipping away at his house. At 1:20 a.m., a time Heine will never forget, the water won out and swept his neighbor away, he says. "All of a sudden, there was a black hole in the wall of his house. The sound of the water was so loud, it was so evil." The next morning, Heine and his wife packed several bags and left Altenahr. Fortunately, his wife had already parked her car up the mountain that evening, Heine says.

In recent days, he and his wife have received a lot of help from the friendly police motorcycle group Blue Knight. They have even been staying with members of the group. The willingness of the neighbors to help one another and the sense of solidarity are something the couple are pleased about, despite the tragedy. "Lately I've had the feeling we live in an every-man-for-himself society, but what we're experiencing right now, this enormous solidarity, it's good to see."

But he is also critical of the timing of when the official relief workers arrived. They did not arrive until the next day. During the night, the people in Altenahr were on their own. No rescue helicopter came to help, and there was no way for them to get help. Since then, many official relief workers have arrived on the scene. But according to many flood victims, the help does not seem to be coordinated.

Orig. text: Benjamin Westhoff, Annika Schmidt

Translation: ck