Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
German officials defended their actions ahead of last week's severe floods that caught many towns by surprise and killed 196 people in Western Europe, but they conceded that more lessons can be learned from the disaster.
As floodwaters receded Monday, authorities continued searching for more victims and intensified their efforts to clean up a sodden swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.
So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in the worst-affected German region, Rhineland-Palatinate, while 47 were killed in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend. The death toll in Belgium was 31.
Authorities said they were likely to find more victims among destroyed homes.
Weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn't appear to have made it to many people in affected areas -- often in the middle of the night.
Federal and state authorities faced criticism from some opposition politicians over the disaster, which comes as a national election looms in September. But Interior Minister Horst Seehofer dismissed suggestions that federal officials had made mistakes and said warnings were passed to local authorities "who make decisions on disaster protection."
"I have to say that some of the things I'm hearing now are cheap election rhetoric," Seehofer said during a visit to the Steinbach Reservoir in western Germany, where authorities say they no longer fear a dam breach. "Now really isn't the hour for this."
Seehofer underlined that message during a visit Monday to Bad Neuenahr, in the worst-hit area, but said authorities will have to draw lessons once the immediate relief phase is over.
"Wherever we can improve anything -- in alarms, in equipment ... we must do so," he said. "We owe that to the families who have been affected, and above all to the victims."
The head of Germany's civil protection agency said the weather service had "forecast relatively well" and that the country was well-prepared for flooding on its major rivers.
But, Armin Schuster told ZDF television Sunday night, "half an hour before, it is often not possible to say what place will be hit with what quantity" of water. He said 150 warning notices had been sent out via apps and media.
He said "we will have to investigate" where sirens sounded and where they didn't.
Officials in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state said they were well-prepared for flooding, and municipalities were alerted and acted.
But the state's interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said after visiting the hard-hit village of Schuld with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that "we, of course, had the problem that the technical infrastructure -- electricity and so on -- was destroyed in one go."
Local authorities "tried very quickly to react," he said. "But this was an explosion of the water in moments. ... You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation." Cellphone networks also were knocked out by flooding.
Broader questions about Germany's emergency warning system had arisen after a nationwide test in September 2020, the first in 30 years, largely failed. Sirens didn't sound in many places, or had been removed after the end of the Cold War, and push alerts from the national warning app arrived late or not all.
Schuster, the head of the civil protection agency, noted that a program to reform civil protection was launched earlier this year, including a drive to encourage local authorities to install more sirens. Germany doesn't have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk radio it is exploring the possibility.
As local communities face the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as bridges and water systems, Merkel's Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid Wednesday.
At the Steinbach Reservoir, North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet said the dam was designed for a risk that might occur once in 10,000 years.
"This was exceeded in the last few days," he said. "It was a likelihood nobody had foreseen."
------
Associated Press writer Frank Jordans at the Steinbach Reservoir contributed.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
Ontario Provincial Police say 64 suspects are facing a combined 348 charges in connection with a series of child sexual exploitation investigations that spanned the province.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
The trial of a man who admits he killed four women in Winnipeg is set to begin Wednesday, and a law professor says lawyers for Jeremy Skibicki have multiple hurdles to clear for a defence of mental illness.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
A first-of-its-kind Canadian research study is working towards a major medical breakthrough for a brain disorder, believed to be caused by repeated head injuries, that can only be detected after death.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.