Altenahr / Bad Neuenahr / Mayschoss / guilt – Bernd Gasper is afraid of Christmas. “This year we are celebrating alone for the first time,” says his wife Brigitte. After the flood disaster around four months ago, the family, which has been rooted in the Ahr Valley for generations, has been scattered around. Your houses in Altenahr-Altenburg have been demolished or uninhabitable and have to dry out. The couple lacks the familiar, close and natural contact with their sons and grandchildren, siblings and their families, as well as friends in the Ahr valley. “The meetings are now always associated with a lot of driving,” says Brigitte Gasper.
Tiny houses as heatable emergency shelters
Bernd Gasper’s older brother Gerd has mixed feelings about Christmas and the turn of the year: “We have to go through that.” He is waiting for an expert to examine the walls of his completely gutted house for oil and other pollutants. “He actually wanted to come this week – but he’s not,” says the 80-year-old. “If there are no pollutants in the masonry, it goes on,” says the architect. “And if there are? Gasper shrugs. “I do not know that.”
dpa / Boris Roessler
This is where her parents’ house stood until a few weeks ago: the brothers Bernd (left) and Gerd Gasper in Altenahr-Altenstadt.
With the winter temperatures, another question is becoming more and more urgent for numerous flood victims on the Ahr: When will I get a functioning heating system again? “Of course we have customers who are cold – they don’t have a functioning heating system,” said the head master of the sanitary, heating and air conditioning guild in the Ahrweiler district, Frank Wershofen. In the lower Ahr valley around Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, a new high-pressure natural gas pipeline has been put into operation. “But over 3000 gas meters have not yet been installed in the houses.”
Ahr municipalities are increasingly organizing heatable emergency shelters for flood victims without long-term, warm alternative quarters. Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, for example, has ordered 64 “tiny houses” with 34 square meters of living space each for up to five residents. Sinzig, Grafschaft and the Altenahr community also rely on mini-houses like this. In addition, a container village is being built in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. “There are 16 three-way solutions, each with a kitchen and a bathroom in a middle container and two outer containers,” said city spokesman Michael Rennenberg.
That sounds like a quick and unbureaucratic solution. But mostly it is the waiting, the bureaucracy, the constant phone calls, e-mails and follow-up questions that create problems for people. “It upsets us so much, it finishes in the evening,” says Brigitte Gasper. In order to apply for reconstruction aid at the Investment and Structural Bank (ISB), they drove to the info point once or twice a week for a month. “A normal person cannot see through it,” says Bernd Gasper.
Even the advisors at the info point could not answer all of their questions. “There is someone sitting there and should be familiar with the banking business after a three-day crash course,” reports Brigitte Gasper. Finally everything in the online application was green, but the Post-ID was still missing. “Now we’re waiting again.”
There is no meter reading because the house no longer exists
On the night of the flood from July 14th to 15th, she lost her 90-year-old mother and doesn’t understand “why the church bells didn’t ring in the entire Ahr valley” after the masses of water tore away entire houses in guilt. The 65-year-old is convinced that people could have understood this signal and saved themselves, including her mother. “She was still totally fit.”
The electricity supplier, with whom she wanted to deregister her mother’s house after the demolition, simply did not understand that there was no more meter reading because the house no longer existed, reports Brigitte Gasper. At some point he hung up. “What should I do now?”
Tim Himmes, out of guilt, has been waiting for his expert’s report for months. Without that, he could not complete the application for reconstruction aid at the ISB, says the 21-year-old. The corona pandemic has already hit his showman family hard.
Together with helpers, the 21-year-old gutted the ground floor of his parents’ house, which was devastated by the flood, laid laminate and painted the walls. The living and dining room is fully furnished. A wood stove provides warmth. “It wasn’t completely dry yet, but the parents absolutely wanted it that way.” He has just reconnected a 20 meter sewer pipe to the sewer system, is waiting for a vibrating plate for the front garden that was dug up and is happy about the sunflowers that are scattered in the Ahr valley grow between the badly damaged houses.
“The people who went through it will never forget it. Every time I hear water or rain, I get cramps, “says Tim’s mother with tears. “I would not have been able to do this without my children.” She started to paint in order to cope with what she had experienced.
dpa / Boris Roessler
In Insul, Rhineland-Palatinate, someone painted an advent calendar on the protective tarpaulin of a damaged house.
Bernd Gasper is now physically feeling the traumatic experiences and their consequences. “The whole thing made me sick,” says the 69-year-old. “The flood not only stole our house and belongings, but also the place,” says the pensioner, who has collected donations for many years with his association “Loewe” and has designed a number of things in the village – such as a playground from which there is nothing left. He is convinced that without affordable natural insurance, people will leave the valley.
Nevertheless. The Gasper couple want to go back to their hometown. Just where? Your house is no longer there either. They found accommodation in Wachtberg near Bonn, around 20 kilometers away, in the house of a work colleague of Brigitte Gasper’s brother. “The people there are very nice to us and also help us,” says Bernd Gasper. “We feel good there, but that’s not home.”
No more living spaces allowed on the ground floor
“I’m not building anymore,” says the 69-year-old. The flood-adapted requirements at the point where his parents’ house stood made a completely different architectural style necessary and no longer allowed living spaces on the ground floor. “I’m getting older and I’m not building anything anymore where you have to walk so many stairs.”
Building a new one and then selling it is not an alternative either. “Who wants to buy that now?” Asks Gasper. The catastrophe will perhaps be forgotten in a few years. “But I’m not putting anything there that has been uninhabited for five or six years.” The community also has an interest in the property in order to set up a turning lane for the buses that go to the school center and the old people’s home. “The road here is very narrow for the buses.”
First, his nephew Thorsten wants to set up two containers for an office and a warehouse on the property of his demolished parental home. Because: “My refrigeration and air conditioning company has swam away,” says the 45-year-old. The air conditioning technician and firefighter also lost his half-timbered house from 1791 in Mayschoss, but was able to move his family to one of the few houses in the village that was spared the flood.
A return to Altenahr-Altenburg might be possible for him and his wife in 2023, says Bernd Gasper. One option is the house of one of his sons. Provided that he is building a new building with his wife – a little higher, further away from the water. Fortunately, the owners of his temporary residence in Wachtberg did not put any pressure on them, “and we now even have a real kitchen there,” says the happy 69-year-old. “Many others now have to move out again somewhere and look for a new apartment in the winter months.”
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