BS-I-1: Person hours due to weather-related damage events | Umweltbundesamt

BS-I-1: Person hours due to weather-related damage events

In years dominated by hurricanes, heavy rain or extreme flood events, there is a distinct increase in the emergency relief workload to be dealt with by THW volunteers. The time series examined is strongly characterised by severe individual events. The impacts made in 2021 by the ‘Bernd‘ low-pressure system and the associated flood disaster which struck western Germany in particular, culminated in the highest call-out peak ever. So far, no significant trend has been identified.

Extreme events entail unprecedented deployment peaks

In the course of the past two decades, Germany has experienced a number of meteorological extreme events. As a result of climate change, such events have been occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. Extreme weather events sometimes entail massive call-out stresses imposed on emergency relief responders involved in civic protection. After all, part of the essential remit is to provide technical assistance whenever extreme weather-related and weather-pattern related events cause emergency or disaster situations. For example, emergency relief responders are able to secure dykes by means of sandbags or install mobile flood protection walls in order to prevent flooding; they evacuate residents and they prevent the flooding of industrial or sewage treatment plants. After severe storms or hurricanes the emergency relief responders remove windthrows from roads and rails making them passable again. Even after a relatively brief and localised heavy-rain event, emergency relief responders are often busy for hours pumping out flooded cellars and pumping living accommodation dry.

In many places the organisations active in the field of civic protection are signalling already now that the number of weather-related call-outs for which technical assistance is required is on the increase. There are detailed quantitative and comparable data available on the number, duration and causes of call-outs carried out by THW. Although so far no significant trends have been identified regarding long-term increased strains on emergency relief responders, the figures for recent years demonstrate the way in which individual extreme events – and above all the ‘floods of the century’ in various river basins – have characterised the deployment situation.

In the early summer of 2013, entire sweeps of country in Central Europe were inundated owing to rainfalls lasting for days on end. In Germany, a total of nine Länder were affected, especially in the east and south-east, in the river valleys of the Danube, Elbe and Saale. Severe flooding entailed the greatest deployment of fire brigades Germany had ever before experienced. The THW itself rates the year 2013 as unprecedented in terms of the call-out pressure on volunteers: The total number of person hours in that year amounted to 1.5 million.

In July 2021 one of the most severe flood disasters experienced in Germany’s history triggered the greatest ever call-out effort since the foundation of the THW. Parts of the Ahr valley in Rhineland-Palatinate were impacted particularly violently. The overwhelming volumes of water took many people by surprise. There were numerous fatalities and thousands of casualties. For months on end a great number of emergency relief responders from all over Germany, including some 15,500 THW responders, gave assistance in the areas affected.²³⁰ The extent of the disaster meant that volunteers across the entire range of skills and capabilities were required: In the first few days the focus was concentrated primarily on rescue and pump operations. As water levels receded, the physically demanding workload shifted increasingly to clearance and infrastructure operations. As a result of massive destruction, it was necessary to restore the electricity and water supply in many locations. Besides, utmost priority was given to the (provisional) restoration of impassable or destroyed highways and bridges in order to safeguard the supply of relief goods to the population. Overall, the THW’s emergency relief responders worked just under 3 million person hours in that year.

The high number of call-out figures incurred in 2002, 2006 and 2010 were also mostly due to flooding events. The above-average call-out figures for 2007 were predominantly due to the hurricane Cyril in January. In May and June 2016, the impacts of heavy rain kept emergency relief responders on their toes nationwide. From the end of May until the beginning of July some 10,000 THW emergency relief responders were in action day and night. Events in the town of Simbach-am-Inn gave rise to the THW’s biggest drinking water emergency relief operation in Germany hitherto. In the course of a fortnight the THW supplied the population with a total of 5.6 million litres of water. Another focal point was the restoration of road bridges and supply infrastructures which had been destroyed by streams and rivers turning into raging torrents.

The steadily high demand for emergency relief services continuing work week after week is a particularly great challenge for THW as the organisation relies predominantly on voluntary helpers for their emergency relief operations. For some volunteers this involves release from their place of work, sometimes for weeks on end – a tricky situation given the current labour market. This results in a high turnover of emergency relief responders, which requires increased coordination and entails organisational problems.

Basically it has to be borne in mind that the THW’s call-out figures provide only limited clues as to the other organisations involved in civic protection because the THW operates only on demand. Besides, the figures are also dependent on the type of events occurring, because in specific call-outs, it is above all the THW with their specific material equipment which will be geared up for the task.

The KlamEx project of the strategic alliance of authorities entitled ‘Adaptation to climate change’ explored in 2019 to 2021, to what extent call-out figures recorded by fire brigades are suitable for an inter-municipal analysis of the call-out strain incurred as a result of extreme weather events. A survey regarding the documentation of tempest-related call-outs, in which 10 Länder participated was conducted within this framework. The responses showed that a great number of input systems were used and that there were differences in the categorisation of the deployment cause or in the interpretation of the term ‘Einsatz’. For this reason there are limitations to any comparison of call-out figures from one municipality to another. This is in contrast to deployment data from Länder in which homogeneous regulations existed for the collection of call-out figures within their area of responsibility. The introduction of a nationwide homogeneous regulation is not foreseeable for the near future.

Notwithstanding the lack of a homogeneous data basis, it has to be assumed that in respect of years with distinct extreme events high deployment workloads accrue both in fire brigades and in private emergency relief organisations owing to weather-related and weather-pattern related events and that such call-outs are associated with complex difficulties on account of the voluntary nature of the organisational structures concerned.

^{230 - BBK – Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe 2021: Pandemie und Hochwasserkatastrophe. Magazin Bevölkerungsschutz, 04/21. Bonn, 57 pp. https://www.bbk.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Magazin-Bevoelkerungsschutz/Ausgaben/magazin-2021-4/magazin-4-2021_node.html}