More than 1,000 people were missing in flood-hit regions of Germany and Belgium on Friday, where waters were still rising with the death toll already well over 100 and communications in some areas cut.
Entire communities lay in ruins after swollen rivers swept through towns and villages in the western German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, Belgium as well as the Netherlands.
In Germany alone, at least 103 people have died in what is the country’s worst mass loss of life in years. Twelve of the dead were residents of a home for disabled people in Sinzig to the south of Cologne who were surprised by the flashfloods at night.
The death toll is expected to rise further as more houses collapsed, while in Belgium, media said at least 14 had died.
Some 114,000 households in Germany were without power on Friday and mobile phone networks had collapsed in some flooded regions, which meant that family and friends were unable to track down their loved ones.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, around 1,300 people were reported missing in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne, the district government said. Further north, in Erftstadt, several houses collapsed on Friday, and authorities feared casualties.
Roads around the town were impassable after being washed away by the floods. Rescue crews tried to reach residents by boat and had to communicate via walkie-talkie.
The German military has deployed over 700 soldiers to support rescue efforts. Authorities worried that further dams could overflow, spilling uncontrolled floods.
The devastation of the floods in western Europe, attributed by meteorologists to a climate crisis driven shift in the atmosphere’s jet stream that has brought in land water that once stayed at sea, could shake up an election that has until now seen little discussion of climate.
