Rödl Employee Fund for Children’s Aid: Disastrous flood in Erftstadt in July 2021

It was also difficult to make contact because the access roads were impassable in the first days after the flood and the communication lines were broken. I was able to contact a badly affected family from Erftstadt through the crisis team of the Rhine-Erft district police. The family was on a camping holiday when it took only a few minutes for the flood water to enter their house. Their 15-year-old son Timo lost almost everything as his room was in the basement. All rooms were flooded with brown muddy water that stood approx. 180 cm high. The family’s heating unit supplying hot water was also destroyed.

After the drying phase that is still ongoing, all rooms need redecorating from scratch and have now been actually reduced to a shell to prevent further damage.

Timo lost everything because his entire room was flooded – at that, it had been refurbished and refurnished shortly before the flood. His entire computer equipment is no longer usable. In mid-August of 2021 he started training to become an IT assistant – and having a computer of his own is indispensable for this training. Therefore we decided to support the family and especially Timo with a computer as the first step.

Even though the drying process will take some more weeks and the refurbishment of the rooms cannot yet be started, the computer equipment is the first step towards normalcy.