The Ahr Valley flood
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The worst effects of climate change are often framed as a problem for the future. But for some, the worst has already happened. As world leaders gather in Glasgow to talk about how to bring down emissions, Assignment tells the story of three places which have been at the sharp end of extreme weather events. Germany's Ahr Valley was a picturesque chain of ancient towns and villages along a small, beautiful river - a region popular with tourists, famous for its wine production. Then on one terrifying night in July, the water rose with little warning, engulfing almost every house. It was the worst flood in the valley for 700 years. People fought their way through the water, clung for hours to roofs and trees before they were rescued. More than 100 lost their lives. Almost all bridges were destroyed, most homes left uninhabitable, businesses ruined. Even now, many have been unable to return. Tim Whewell travels through the valley, meeting some of the victims as they recall how they struggled to escape the flood, remember the friends and relatives they lost and try to rebuild their lives.
Reported and produced by Tim Whewell Editor: Bridget Harney
(Destruction in Germany’s Ahr Valley after the July 2021 floods. Credit: Reuters/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC World Service, I'm Tim Hewall. The climate crisis isn't coming, it's already here, |
| 0:06.5 | bringing fires and floods that have devastated lives and communities across the world. |
| 0:12.3 | In the second of a special series of assignment on places at the sharp end of climate change, |
| 0:17.9 | I'm visiting Germany's Arv Alley. |
| 0:22.1 | And standing on the cobbled stones of a little Alley in the ancient German town of |
| 0:28.0 | Brankenheim on one side of the land, this big white washed old in steep tiled roof with purple |
| 0:37.8 | and pink flowers flowing down from the window boxes. On the other side is a deep stone-lined |
| 0:45.2 | channel of water for water weed and it's coming out of the cellar of the E.C. Old House |
| 0:52.0 | opposite and you can look into the tank, people have thrown coins in here for good luck and |
| 0:58.6 | this is the source of the river R that flows down a steep valley from here into the river Rhein. |
| 1:08.5 | And there's a stone park here with a verse in German. |
| 1:11.6 | Grüz Queller in der Diefurelle gespielt, you the river in which the trout has played, |
| 1:16.9 | send our warmest greetings to the village of Altenar and to the river Rhein, our father. |
| 1:23.1 | Do and then father Rhein. |
| 1:27.0 | The forest behind there was our place to be. |
| 1:32.5 | In the summer we go for swimming and the winter we go for snow, for sliding. It was our |
| 1:38.9 | heart here. I think it's paradise. |
| 1:41.6 | Yes, we are what it really is. |
| 1:48.9 | On the sides where the sun is shining the Winiada and we had a special stone here in our |
| 1:54.3 | Wally slate and this make a special warmness for the grapes and a special taste for the grapes. |
| 2:03.6 | You're listening to a sign event on the BBC World Service with Meet Him Hewul and this is the |
| 2:08.9 | story of what happened to the Arvalli in the west of Germany on one night in July this year |
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