‘CLIMATE CHANGE TO BLAME’
Dutch PM attributes massive Europe floods to global warming
STORMS that have lashed Europe are “without doubt” the result of climate change, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. More than 150 people have died in the worst floods in decades in Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the latest toll yesterday.
Several towns in southern Netherlands suffered damage from flooding this week, though no deaths had been reported.
When asked on Friday during a visit to the southern province of Limburg whether global warming had contributed to the disaster, Rutte said that was “without a doubt, the case”.
“I don’t want to make hasty declarations. But something is really happening, let’s be clear.”
More than one million euros has been collected for a fund to aid the worst-hit areas in the Netherlands, the ANP news agency reported.
To stop any future flooding, Rutte said: “The first thing to do, and fortunately we are doing it in the Netherlands, is to give space to rivers.”
After major flooding in 1993 and again in early 1995, the Dutch reshaped areas around the rivers.
More than two billion euros was invested to widen riverbanks. The project was completed in 2019.
Western Germany suffered the most brutal impact of the deluge that also pummelled Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
With the death toll in Germany
at 133 three days into the disaster, rescuers said more bodies were likely to be found in sodden cellars and collapsed homes.
“We have to assume we will find further victims,” said Carolin Weitzel, mayor of Erftstadt, where a landslide was triggered by the floods.
In Germany’s worst-hit states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, residents
who fled the deluge began returning to their homes yesterday.
In neighbouring Belgium, the death toll jumped to 24, with many people still missing.
Prime Minister Alexander de Croo was heading for the scene of what he has called “unprecedented” flood damage in the Meuse River basin.
He declared Tuesday an official day of mourning.