Duisburg • Hot weather set in Germany, and many of the country’s inhabitants rushed to the water – to sea beaches, lakes, rivers, reservoirs and other bodies of water. At the same time, the first reports of tragic incidents appeared in the media. The other day, in the Rhine near Duisburg, where these photographs were taken, a 17-year-old girl and two girls who came to the river together drowned. The body of one of them was found by rescuers, but further searches were unsuccessful and after about a day they were stopped.
It is rivers and other inland waters that account for nearly 90 percent of all such deaths in Germany – 335 of 378 drowned in 2020. In some years, the total is even higher – more than 550 people. This is evidenced by the statistics of the German water rescue society DLRG. The peak usually occurs in August.
Why the Rhine is dangerous
Experts strongly recommend that special care be exercised on the Rhine – or rather, from year to year they categorically urge not to swim in this river at all – nowhere! Even an adult who is just knee-deep near the shore can be pulled under the water – especially when cargo ships and barges pass by.
Once in the middle of the river, it is difficult or even impossible to get out of the Rhine on your own even for professional swimmers (!) – the current is so strong here even where it seems slow and calm, and dangerous eddies and funnels drag people under the water to the very bottom. On hot weekends, there are usually lifeguards on boats near the official beaches. Police on boats are trying to get out of the water those who do it in dangerous places.
Rhine and Autobahn
It is impossible to fence the Rhine with a fence, so all that remains is to appeal to prudence. Moreover, in many places along this river there are enough lakes and other bodies of water where you can spend hot days with less risk to life, not to mention open summer pools.
The parents are especially responsible for this. One of the rescuers in an interview with the regional media company WDR, trying to more clearly describe the danger, suggested that parents should be able to calmly observe how children play football on the reserve lane of the Autobahn. At the same time, due to the coronavirus pandemic, schoolchildren were deprived of the opportunity to learn to swim in pools, which can increase the risk of accidents on the water.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Much water has flowed under the bridge since the time of the ancient Romans, who founded their first settlements on its shores about two thousand years ago. Later they turned into the current German cities: Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Koblenz, Bonn, Cologne, Xanten. The inhabitants of the Rhine have seen and will see many floods. The worst happened in the winter of 1784, and of the last, the most serious were the floods of 1993 and 1995.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Father Rein is a lover of visiting, but he does not do it often, but according to his mood, depending on the weather. Sometimes it is limited to the symbolic flooding of walking paths and coastal meadows. If he decides to really show his stormy disposition again, then he can, despite the resistance shown, get to the basements and first floors. That’s that. Living on the Rhine – living with the Rhine.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The benefits from such a neighborhood are many times greater than the possible threats. Over the centuries, they have learned to deal with such surprises here – to build dams and quickly put things in order after uninvited visits. In recent years, hundreds of millions of euros have been invested in the construction of protective structures. At the same time, a part of the selected floodplain territories is returned to the river, so that there is where to distribute.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The extreme manifestations of the unbridled nature of the Rhine regularly alternate with periods of low water, as happened again in the dry autumn of 2015. In the Cologne area, the lowest level on record was recorded in September of an abnormally hot 2003 – only 81 centimeters. Was it possible to wade the shallow Rhine? No, but more on that later.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Floods and shallow waters are a particular headache for Rhine captains. Now every day about 200 ships pass along the river, for example, between Mainz and Koblenz. There used to be even more. The largest river port in Europe is located on the Rhine in Duisburg. In the last century, steel, coal and other goods were exported from the Ruhr region through it. This is how he looked in 1935.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Port of Duisburg today. Each modern river container ship replaces 100 trucks, not to mention ships carrying construction materials, gas, oil, other raw materials for the chemical industry, as well as bulky cargo – transformers, elements of wind power plants and even … space ships, or rather the Soviet Buran in 2008 for the Technical Museum in Speyer.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
For captains, information about the water level is of great importance. It determines how much cargo they can take on a flight so as not to run aground during periods of low water or to pass under bridges during high water. In addition, this data is constantly monitored by the services responsible for flood protection in the Rhine cities and regions. They are supplied by special water metering stations.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The current data on the water level in the Rhine on the territory of Germany can be found on a single reference phone – 19429, before dialing the code of the city of interest, that is, for example, for Bonn – 0228 19429 or 0211 19429 – for Dusseldorf, shown in the photo. The data of the last measurements is reported around the clock by a voice answering machine.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
On the 865 German kilometers of the Rhine, 22 gauging stations are in continuous operation. The most important for shipping are the automated stations located in Kaube and Cologne – “Pegel Kaub” and “Pegel Köln”. The “Cologne Pegel” sits in this circular turret on the lively Old Town waterfront. The hands of its round dial do not show the time of day, but the water level in the river.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The “Kaub pegel” is located on the Middle Rhine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This place is well known to tourists, thanks to the medieval Pfalzgrafenstein castle, erected in the middle of the river. Regular measurements of the water level here began in the middle of the 19th century, and the water meter was built in 1905.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
This medieval watchtower is nearby – about 20 kilometers upstream near Bingen. The Middle Rhine has always been and remains a difficult place for river navigation. The draft of cargo ships, depending on the water level and the tendency to fall or rise in this section, can range from 80 to 120 cm, and the minimum depth of the running strip is 2.1 meters.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
In the Cologne area, the systematic measurement of the water level began in 1771. After about ten years, they began to keep regular records. The first water measuring station was destroyed by ice floes in 1784, a record-breaking flood. In February, the Rhine then rose here to a mark of 13.63 meters.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Data on earlier catastrophes are known from records in medieval annals and marks that have survived to this day on houses and buildings that were flooded with water. The oldest is dated July 1342 – 11.53 meters in the Cologne area. The peak of this flood on the Rhine and many other rivers in Europe fell on the day of Mary Magdalene, as it was called – Magdalenenhochwasser.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
These modern crane houses in the former harbor quarter of Cologne have never seen major flooding. The data on the water level in the Rhine are relative data. The zero mark on the Cologne water measuring scale is tied to the national system of altitude coordinates and is located several meters above the river bottom. If the Rhine ever crushes to “zero”, this does not mean that it is completely dry.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The Cologne zero level of the Rhine (Pegelnull) is fixed at 34.972 meters above the national zero mark (Normalhöhennull). She, in turn, is located on the Church of St. Alexander in the Lower Saxon Wallenhorst. This is how Rhine looked at the beginning of November 2015, when he grinded down to 1.1 meters.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The average normal level of the river in the Cologne region is 3.21 meters. This indicator is calculated based on data over a decade. Dry periods delight historians and archaeologists, who, studying the bare bottom, are looking for traces of ancient Roman marinas on the Rhine, for example, in the Bonn region. There are also unpleasant finds, such as unexploded bombs from the Second World War.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
During floods for shipping in the Cologne area, two marks are decisive. The first is 6.2 meters, upon reaching which there are restrictions on the speed of ships on the river so that the waves from them do not destroy the shore. The second is 8.3 meters, at which the movement stops completely.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
The promenade in the Old Town, usually crowded and loved by tourists, is closed at a level of 9.8 meters. If the Rhine rises another 90 centimeters, an emergency flood protection plan is put in place in Cologne, that is, the installation of a mobile fence – an additional wall of metal beams – begins.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
This mobile system was developed after the floods of 1993 and 1995, which partially flooded the Old City. The water level at the peak of the flood then exceeded 10.6 meters. The new system protects this historic part of the city up to a level of 11.3 meters. The total damage from the 1993 flood alone on the Rhine is estimated at about 500 million euros, of which 56 million were in Cologne.
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Floods and shallow waters on the Rhine
Experts have calculated the possible damage from a serious Rhine flood if there were no protective structures. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, it could amount to 130 billion euros. With the changing climate of the earth and more frequent extreme weather events, these investments in the future are paying off.
Author: Maxim Nelyubin
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