Returning home after Germany's deadly floods

The water is slowly receding, but the disaster is far from over. In devastated riverside towns in Germany, people are only slowly working their way through dealing with what the flood has left behind: bulks of mud and piles of rubbish.

The flood completely destroyed Jutta Schelleckes' apartment. She and her injured husband had been living in the mess for two days before firefighters arrived and decided to escort them out of their apartment and help them find shelter. Jutta is only one of the thousands of citizens whose homes have become uninhabitable.

What used to be people's furniture and household items has now turned into waste that fills up the streets. If not removed quickly, the waste can hinder rescue operations and impose safety risks to relief workers and residents. The mud can dry into a rock-hard surface that glues rubble to the streets.

With volunteers' help, residents have started to clean up their battered homes and shops. Garbage trucks drive back and forth to remove the aftermath's waste from the streets. In Trier, one of the severely affected regions, 14,000 tons of flood waste was collected during the weekend, the spokesperson of the region's waste management association told public broadcaster SWR.

In addition to an army of volunteers in disaster zones, countless solidarity initiatives were created to collect donations. The flow of donations quickly became overwhelming, to the extent that several aid organizations announced they have no more capacity to receive more donations. While the COVID pandemic has kept people apart, the disaster has brought communities in the region together.