Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 25, 1993 TAG: 9312250049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: COLOGNE, GERMANY LENGTH: Medium
The cathedral, begun in the 13th century with a nave and spires built in the 19th, remained high and dry over the muddy brown river, which burst its banks and flooded parts of the medieval quarter this week.
An estimated 50,000 people in Cologne, and tens of thousands more from eastern France to the Netherlands, have been driven out of their homes over the Christmas holiday.
At least five people have been killed in Germany alone, and officials estimated damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
An icy rain poured out of the skies again Friday, but the flood waters peaked in Cologne overnight and authorities said the Rhine was receding by about half an inch an hour. Cologne also had a slight earthquake Friday morning, measuring 2.5 on the Richter scale, but hardly anyone noticed.
"We've come through the worst, but it looks like a lake outside my window," said Della Boselager, as she took a bag of Christmas presents from her apartment house, just above the flood line.
The announcement that the flood had crested in Cologne left downriver cities in Germany and in the Netherlands bracing for the worst over the weekend. In the southeastern Netherlands, about 8,500 people had been evacuated by Friday and dikes were reported collapsing along the Niers River. The Main River was expected to crest in Frankfurt today.
Though the Rhine floods regularly, not in this century had it risen as far as it did this week. The river, normally about a quarter of a mile wide as it courses through Cologne, was a swiftly moving torrent Friday, half a mile across, inundating roads and cellars.
Much of Cologne's old town, on an embankment below the cathedral, has been under water since Wednesday night, when temporary barriers erected to keep back the river failed.
Rescue workers erected temporary walkways on scaffolding to allow people living on upper stories of flooded buildings to stay in their homes, but most were without heat or electricity.
A few barges and cruise ships rode out the flood on their moorings. One cruise ship, the Stolzenfels, had been provisioned to serve Christmas dinner to 450 guests, but cruise line officials said it would be at least Tuesday before the ship could be boarded, leaving the captain and his 14-member crew stranded on board with an abundance of roast goose and wine.
Authorities in the French town of Soissons also alerted the 30,000 people there that rising waters on the Aisne River could force some of them to evacuate.
Bonn, Germany, also had the worst floods this century before the river peaked on Thursday.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB