Dresden, GERMANY – It’s a special, pervasive, foul, muddy smell permeating Dresden for the last few days as soon as you go near the River Elbe.
The water quietly sloshes onto the Elbe cycle path, which is several meters higher up and borders the river. It has been washing up mud, small branches and twigs and making cycling and walking on the Elbe river – which is sometimes more than five meters above the normal water level – impossible in some places.
After the flood of the century in 2002 and the flood of 2013, the people of Dresden are used to occasional flooding in spring. But in recent years, floods have become more frequent, and after the recent collapse of the Carola Bridge in Dresden and the millennium floods in neighboring Czechia and Poland, locals watched the rising water levels with concern.
Some residents are clearing out their cellars as a precautionary measure, and onlookers are constantly passing by the sandbag walls and the river, looking.
Despite fears of water backing up from the Carola Bridge, which collapsed a week ago, the all-clear was given.
“It can be clearly stated that the water level will not be affected by the bridge section,” said René Herold, head of Dresden’s environmental department.
Flood protection gates were raised as a precaution and sandbags were laid out. The motto: better one protection too many than one too few, because the water level rose quickly, by almost a centimeter every hour.
Another concern of the residents living along the river: the groundwater pushing upwards into the cellars and the neighboring streams as well as the old Elbe arm, from which the water came from two fronts during the last flood in 2013.
At the same time, they have come to terms with the situation and are now simply taking detours or walking, or sometimes cycling through the river.
No one here is letting the water get them down; although the water level is high, it is not a disaster like in Germany’s neighboring countries of Czechia, Poland or Austria, where it sometimes rained up to 370 liters per square meter.
With numerous houses destroyed, a number of deaths and the water rushing through villages as well as dam bursts in Poland, climate change is taking its toll in the form of a new disaster.
And suddenly those who have been denying climate change are suspiciously quiet in the affected countries of Austria, Czechia, Poland, Romania and Germany. They are all looking on spellbound and with concern at the almost apocalyptic scenes they are witnessing.
And Dresden can already breathe a sigh of relief – the maximum level of 6.10 meters was reached on Wednesday night and from then on the water level only fell.
The water from the heavy rain from the Czech Republic has already flowed past, and where bicycles had to ride through the river or take a detour the day before, only small, damp deposits of sand remain where the river had previously spread out.
It’s a relief for the residents of Dresden, but in the flood areas of the other countries, the masses of water will be part of life for even longer.
Lina Marie Schulenkorf is a Senior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
