Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 31, 1995 TAG: 9501310164
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BONN, GERMANY LENGTH: Medium
More than 20 people have died and more than 18,000 have been evacuated since the heavy rains and flooding began last week. Large areas of France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and England remained flooded.
The Rhine in Cologne, Germany, reached 34 feet 7 inches by afternoon. Officials predicted it would top this century's record of 34 feet, 71/3 inches, set in January 1926.
Reinhard Vogt, head of the emergency center in Cologne, said the Rhine's rise had slowed by sundown. Cologne cathedral, near the city's main train station, was not threatened.
Shipping on most flooded European rivers was suspended.
In France, the government said 15 people died and five were missing. At least four have died in Germany, two in Belgium and one in Austria.
More than 40,000 homes were damaged and 6,000 people evacuated in France, the government said.
The Ardennes, in eastern France, was the hardest-hit region. The Meuse River reached record levels, and many towns shut down schools and factories.
The Mosel River continued rising at Koblenz, Germany, 50 miles south of Cologne. The Saar River on Germany's border with France was also flooded.
Water surrounded 3,000 homes in Koblenz. Boats delivered provisions to residents living on the upper floors of their homes.
The streets of Beuel, a Bonn suburb, resembled Venetian canals. Dozens of homes were cut off from the outside by murky Rhine water.
``The water line is just three stairs away from coming into my apartment,'' said Oskar Baecker, 88, who left his ground-floor apartment on a rescue boat to buy a water pump in Bonn. He, unlike many others, has not fled his home.
Crews in the hardest-hit cities have erected elevated walkways for people to reach their homes.
Flooding also cut off homes and streets in Frankfurt and other towns along the Main River. The Main runs east to west from Bavaria in southern Germany.
Waters moved into the historic district between the Main and the Frankfurt cathedral, and officials scrambled to save valuable documents from the History Museum.
In the Netherlands, officials in the southern Limburg province asked 3,000 people from outlying villages to join 12,600 others and evacuate. Tens of thousands more awaited evacuation.
Towns also remained flooded along the swollen Meuse River in Belgium, where water 3 feet deep lapped at some doors. Homes in Luxembourg also were flooded.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB