The communities in the Steyr-Land and Kirchdorf districts got off “with a black eye” in the flood of the century – as the two district fire brigade commanders Wolfgang Mayr and Helmut Berc say. Nevertheless, 50 emergency personnel from the Laussa, Aschach/Steyr, Sierning, Bad Hall, Großraming, Losenstein and Schweinsegg-Zehetner fire brigades set out with vehicles on Sunday afternoon, albeit without blue lights or sirens. The firefighters from the Steyr-Land district, all experienced in flood operations, came to the aid of the fire brigades in the disaster area in Lower Austria.
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In Hadersdorf am Kamp, the Upper Austrians joined the chain of helpers who, by midnight, had heaved around 6,000 sandbags onto an embankment to stabilize a dam. After their work was done, the firefighters from the Steyr-Land district fell tiredly into the camp beds that had been set up for them in a gym in Fels am Wagram. Yesterday, the Aschach fire brigade was sent to Loosdorf to pump out dozens of cellars. “The homeowners couldn’t figure out where the water in their cellars was coming from,” says district fire chief Mayr. There was no trickle anywhere that would have swollen into a raging river and burst its banks; after the massive, persistent rain, the groundwater was simply pushed into the houses. “This was something unknown for those affected in this region,” says Mayr. Which is why, after the first clean-up work, bulky waste was already piling up meters high in front of the house driveways.
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Photo: Josef Moser
Source: Nachrichten
