Deadly floods left this German town in tatters. Now it's trying to climate-proof itself

Standing on the tips of his toes, Alfred Sebastian stretches his arm as high as it will go toward the number 2021 spray-painted in red on the side of a building, which still bears brown watermarks from that horrific night in July.

"The high waters came here in 2016," said the mayor of the German village of Dernau, pointing at a mark three metres up the wall. "Here in 1910," he continued, pointing even higher, "and all the way at the top ― the catastrophic floods of this year."

Dernau, which is about 60 kilometres south of Cologne, was one of the communities worst affected by summer floods in 2021 in western Germany. It sits along the banks of the Ahr River, which snakes its way through the rolling vineyards of the Ahr Valley.

High waters are not uncommon here, but on July 14, they reached a record height of seven metres, when torrential rains turned the river into a forceful rush of water that swept away cars, homes, even major infrastructure.

A 40-kilometre stretch of the Ahr Valley was destroyed and 134 people were killed in a matter of hours.

Dernau dentist Peter Wild, 55, and his wife, Judit, live three blocks from the Ahr. Even here, the water completely flooded the first two levels of their house. They have no floors and the walls have been stripped bare. Not a single piece of furniture remains.

"We threw all the equipment and furniture out of the window," Wild said, gesturing toward an open second-floor window. "All the furniture is out. Everything has been removed down to the bare concrete ― all the tiles, the flooring, everything."

More than half of the houses in Dernau are now uninhabitable, says Sebastian, as the floods spoiled the material with which they were built or destroyed their foundation completely.

The ferocity of the floods and the damage they caused was the worst weather disaster in Germany since the Second World War.

Five months later, electricity and clean water have not been fully restored, while the sounds of bulldozers and drills can be heard late into the night. Brown water lines are still visible on some houses, while empty lots are all that is left of others.

In the wake of the devastating effects of climate change, this German village has not only been forced to rebuild, but to rethink its future.

Local and international NGOs ― such as the Workers' Samaritan Federation (ASB), a German aid and welfare organization ― have set up temporary shelters. The ASB erected 11 residential container units in Dernau for the elderly.

These units come with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room and are a blessing for those who have nowhere else to go.

"Previously, these were refugee accommodations," said Armeen Kolians, the head of flood relief for ASB. "We have just laid the floors with vinyl, and repainted the walls. Then there is something like a menu service, a home emergency call system and all these things that may not have been needed before, but are now because of the difficult times."