German border city prepares for flood

The waters are rising fast in Frankfurt an der Oder. The wide, brown River Oder that marks Germany's border with Poland looks like it's bulging dangerously, large branches and bushes sweeping ominously by at an alarming speed. On Thursday, the meter near the river bank in the city center reads 360 centimeters (141.7 inches). "That's 55 centimeters higher than it was yesterday," said Moana Engelke, a Green Party candidate in this Sunday's Brandenburg state election.

Even though she could easily check the water level online, Engelke, like many locals, likes to observe the ritual of going down to the bank to look at the glowing red numbers on the meter. The meter has been here since well before the summer of 1997, when the region was hit by a devastating flood that cost 74 lives and several billion euros worth of damage.

The 1997 floods led Frankfurt and Slubice, the Polish town on the eastern bank, to bulk up flood prevention measures, and the twin towns are now comparatively well-prepared: Levees have been built, budgets have been set aside, plans have been drawn up.

All of which means that the people here are not too worried yet — 360 centimeters is nothing, though with the flood wave moving inexorably north from Poland and the Czech Republic, that will change very soon. Official prognoses predict that the Oder will reach 420 centimeters (or Alarm Level I) on Friday, and 530 centimeters (Alarm Level III) as soon as Saturday. According to town hall spokesman Uwe Meier, 600 centimeters, which is the fourth and highest Alarm Level, can no longer be ruled out.

Well-prepared, but worried

And yet, sitting in the city's handsomely refurbished medieval town hall, Meier seemed relatively relaxed: Though emergency shelters have been organized, authorities don't believe they will have to carry out any evacuations this time. Emergency flood walls have already been installed along the riverbank in town, and are designed to cope with levels of well over 600 centimeters. "It's difficult to complain," said Meier. "When we look at the pictures on TV from Romania, and we look at Dresden, and the way the Elbe is acting right now, we're almost on an island of the blissful at the moment."

Even the Brandenburg state election on Sunday has not complicated the logistics too much: Just two polling stations have had to be moved further uphill.

And yet worries linger. "We know how the water is rising, we know that in the flood origin areas there is currently no rain, what we don't know is the crest point — that is the point at which the flood will recede," Meier told DW. "That is still causing us a lot of concern. In the crisis meetings we always say: This is not a sprint, this is a marathon."

For their part, the local Greens think much more could have been done in the last few years to make the Oder safer. "That's what really frustrates me," said Sahra Damus, Green Party parliamentarian running for office again on Sunday. "In 1997, Chancellor Helmut Kohl stood here on the dike and said, 'We need to give our rivers more space again.' And that didn't happen."

Instead, the Oder has been given less room: Construction work has continued, especially on the Polish side, to make the Oder deeper by narrowing its banks, so it can accommodate larger cargo ships. Scientific assessments indicate this has increased the risk of flooding — as has the climate crisis, which makes extreme heavy rainfall more likely in Europe.

On top of this, according to Damus, though the city itself is well-protected for rising water levels, more should have been invested in moving the dikes further back from the river in certain areas, so that heavy flood waters could spread around uninhabited country areas, rather than in towns. 

The environmental elephant in the room

There are also signs that deeper problems are being overlooked. Frankfurt an der Oder has been afflicted with several environmental disasters in recent years. The 1997 flood was followed by another one in 2010, while in 2022 the city was inundated with millions of dead fish — a mysterious mass die-off in the Oder that is still being investigated, but appears to be linked to over-salination, a toxic chemical released by algae, and pollution from Polish mines upriver.

Considering this history, some might think that the voters of Frankfurt — for whom the Oder is, as Uwe Meier puts it, "the artery of the city's life" — ought to be more conscious of environmental issues than people elsewhere in Brandenburg. The Green Party is only polling at around 5% in the state, though it is still part of the coalition government, and Green Environment Minister Axel Vogel has instigated several legal efforts to protect the Oder.

On the campaign trail, however, Green Party candidates have not found that voters are particularly interested. "I haven't got that impression," said Damus. "What we hear at the campaign stands, or when we hand out flyers, are always other questions: War and peace, energy prices, and border controls."

Local climate activist Rosa Skiba, of Students for Climate Justice, has found the same: She is very disappointed by how little the climate crisis is being brought up by Mayor René Wilke, even though the link between a warming climate and extreme weather is well-known. "Occasionally, scientists are asked for their assessment in news reports. But the threat posed by the climate crisis, which manifests itself in the dangers of flooding, is generally relegated to the background," she said. "The effects of the climate crisis are no longer on their way to us, nor are they knocking on our door. No, they are kicking our doors in with floods, forest fires and heat waves."

Many locals do want to protect the river, Skiba added: "But it often happens that the climate crisis is perceived as a very abstract global problem and that when people get upset about local flooding, no connection is made."

Uwe Meier at the town hall also thinks that "climate denialism is very widespread in Germany," to the extent that he has encountered some Frankfurters who even deny the flooding itself. "As soon as people have something against the Greens, they can't believe there's a flood coming — they think it's all talk," he told DW.

In the meantime, the town hall is busy marshalling the immediate emergency response and managing the population's fears. "There are people who panic too much, and want to pack up and flee, and then there's the mass in the middle, who take it seriously, and are motivated to confront the issue," he said. 

He's also noticed that in a crisis, people tend to locate their sense of civic duty. The town hall, he says, has been inundated with calls from people who want to volunteer to fill sandbags and act as "levee watchers." And so, for the next few days, Frankfurters will patrol the levees around the clock to report leaks — before deciding which way to vote on Sunday.

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