Western Europe floods cause 100 deaths, 1,000 missing experts say early warning system problems

Western Europe has been hit by severe flooding, with Germany and Belgium the worst affected, with the death toll climbing to at least 129 and about 1,300 people unaccounted for. In response to the disaster, hydrologist Hannah Cloke said that this means that the early warning system was negligent, and that some areas did not receive warnings to evacuate residents, which led to many disappearances and deaths.

According to the BBC, the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) issued an alert as early as last week, EFAS consultant and hydrologist Hannah Cloke said, according to the system design, each region will receive early warning, the senior can act in advance, so that people evacuate as soon as possible. But apparently some areas did not receive the warning, resulting in residents unable to flee and do not know how to protect themselves, “they obviously do not know that the disaster is about to happen”.

The newspaper pointed out that Europe had a fatal flood in 2002, Professor Kroeker to avoid the tragic situation again, the establishment of the European flood warning system, but unexpectedly recently occurred again serious disaster, it is clear that the system failure, “to 2021 should not appear so many deaths, it is unacceptable”.

Crocker said Germany’s early warning system is very “broken”, led to different answers from all walks of life.

The German federal weather spokesman said that warnings about extreme rainfall have been issued, but left it to local governments to judge the extent of the disaster and whether to evacuate people, or take related measures. Armin Laschet, the governor of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said superiors had warned of serious flooding and had set up dikes, “but the sun was so big that no one noticed the flooding was coming.

The local environment ministry said the early warning system could warn of large rivers, but could not extend to smaller tributaries and could not prevent flooding.