wfn.org | Churches appeal for help as floods surge through central Europe

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Note #7387 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

16-August-2002
02301

Churches appeal for help as floods surge through central Europe  
 
by Frauke Brauns 
Ecumenical News International
 
BIELEFELD, Germany - Floods from the Czech Republic are surging through eastern Germany, reportedly having claimed some 100 lives in all of Europe, displacing tens of thousands of people.   

The floods swept through the historic center of the German city of Dresden after the Elbe River broke its banks leaving some of the city's art treasures under water and threatening Dresden's Baroque masterpiece, the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady).  

Other towns were evacuated overnight and churches and pastors offered help to victims as emergency services prepared for the surges of water downstream.  

Church buildings on higher land have opened their doors to people fleeing from the floods, said Elisabeth Meuser, the spokesperson of the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Dresden.  

"But we can no longer get to the churches because they are on hills and are now surrounded by water. The people taking refuge and the local priests are trapped and cannot be reached," Meuser told ENI today by telephone from her Dresden office which itself was threatened by the flood waters.  

The floods triggered power cuts making it impossible to contact the priests by mobile phone because the instruments had either been switched off or their batteries were flat, Meuser said.  

The Frauenkirche, destroyed in Allied air raids in the Second World War and which lay as a pile of rubble throughout the days of Communist rule in East Germany, was being rebuilt as it was before 1945 and had been unveiled only a few days ago.  

The reconstruction of the church has been made possible thanks to an Anglo-German reconciliation initiative. On Wednesday, despite the efforts of more than 10,000 rescue workers to keep the floodwater at bay by surrounding the church with sandbags, the rising water has now got into the church, said Hans-Joachim Jager, of the organization that has been rebuilding the Frauenkirche.  

Jager could give no estimates of the damage saying this would be possible only when the waters had subsided.  

"The reconstruction will be delayed because it will be impossible to find building workers," he said.  

Local authorities in Dresden have given up trying to save other historic baroque buildings that were destroyed in the Second World War and have been meticulously reconstructed in recent years.  

The towns of Bitterfeld, Dessau and Magdeburg upstream from Dresden are being evacuated.   

Many inhabitants in Bitterfeld fear pollution because the town was the center of the chemical industry in the former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. It houses 350 chemical plants, although the safety precautions are said to be sufficient.  

Churches and church relief agencies have launched programs and have appealed for funds to deal with the floods and their after effects throughout central and eastern Europe.  

Dr. Keith Clements, general secretary of the Geneva-based Conference of European Churches, said his organization would be calling on its more than 120 member churches throughout Europe to provide practical and financial help.  

In a statement that will be read out on Sunday in Lutheran parishes throughout Saxony, whose state capital is Dresden, Bishop Volker Kress called for special collections to provide aid to the victims and help reconstruction.  

The surging flood waters have already hit towns in the north of the Czech Republic but some historic parts of Prague were spared flooding.  

The Czech Republic's biggest Protestant denomination - the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren - said today that the situation was improving in the south of the country and Prague but that in the north "the worst is still expected".  

It said that according to police reports more than 200,000 people had been evacuated.   

Together with other partners, the church's relief agency has started organizing volunteers to provide pastoral and psychological assistance and to set up temporary accommodation.  

In neighboring Slovakia the worst was reported to be over after the Danube began to subside without causing extensive damage.
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