Parts of northern Germany have been hit by floods after days of heavy rains. Rising floodwaters have put dikes at risk of collapse. DW went to a village in Lower Saxony that is now bracing for the danger of collapsing dikes.
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00:00 Floodwaters as far as the eye can see.
00:03 At this small village of Thören in Germany's north,
00:06 rising waters have been collecting for nearly two weeks,
00:10 threatening to get into houses.
00:14 Tanja Woth built this self-made dike to protect her home.
00:19 It's really depressing.
00:23 First there was the danger of floodwaters from behind,
00:26 now because of the groundwater,
00:28 we also have a threat from the other side.
00:30 You think it can't be real. What's going on?
00:33 You just try to use humour to deal with it.
00:37 Outside her house, large pumps are working constantly, day and night.
00:43 Germany has mobilized volunteers from civil protection services,
00:47 but it's a race against the clock and the water.
00:52 In this place we are protecting the village with our pumping capacities.
00:57 We have two high-capacity pumping modules here.
01:01 Each of these pumps can pump 5000 liters per minute.
01:05 And we try to bring the water away from the houses,
01:09 so that this small channel, which is now a big lake,
01:12 will not rise more, so that the village and the people in the houses
01:18 don't get too much flooding.
01:20 The whole village is involved.
01:23 Neighbours are sharing pumps.
01:25 But there is a common fear.
01:27 If the dike around Törn breaks, most of the houses will be flooded.
01:33 The problem is the water is standing here much too long for this dike.
01:38 It's for short term, but it's now nearly two weeks.
01:41 We have special people who will check the strongness of the dikes.
01:47 And if they get weak or if there are small holes,
01:51 we try to fix them and to support the dike so that it will still stand strong.
01:56 Millions of sandbags have been distributed in the flood-hit areas
02:02 to protect settlements and dikes.
02:05 Help is even coming from France.
02:08 French civil security workers travelled 1200 kilometers
02:12 from the south of Paris to control the situation.
02:16 It's part of the EU's cooperation system for disaster response.
02:21 One of them is Ludovic Pénanger,
02:24 who brought experience and some special material to the flooded area.
02:29 We will build a barrier, which you can see here.
02:34 This barrier will be filled with water and will be one meter high.
02:37 The idea is to build a mobile dike, which will be 650 meters long,
02:41 to prevent the water behind us from flooding the village.
02:46 Thören is relying on the team of experts doing everything they can to save it.
02:52 But it's heavily dependent on the weather forecast too,
02:56 which is finally predicting a couple of dry days after weeks of rain.
03:01 of rain.