In flood-hit German town, a priest struggles to give comfort

For a priest tending to his parishioners in one of the German towns hit hardest by last week's flood, giving comfort to those who have lost relatives and many of their possessions is proving to be a difficult task

AHRWEILER, Germany -- The Rev. Joerg Meyrer steels himself before making his way through the stinking piles of mud-caked debris that permeate this once-beautiful town in Germany's wine-growing Ahr valley. For the past five days, the 58-year-old Catholic priest has pulled on his galoshes and walked the streets to try to give comfort to his parishioners as they get on with the grim task of cleaning up what was destroyed by Wednesday's flash flood — and recovering the bodies of those who perished in it. “It came over us like a tsunami," Meyrer recalls. “Bridges, houses, apartments, utility pipes — everything that actually constitutes this town, what it lives on, has been gone since that night.” Residents of Ahrweiler had been told to expect the Ahr River, a tributary of the Rhine, to crest at 7 meters (nearly 23 feet), but Meyrer said few comprehended what that would mean. The last serious flood in the area south of Bonn was more than a century ago.