Years of German Effort Wash Away

As the raging Elbe River spread its waters ever wider through this restored eastern city Thursday, residents and officials watched in dumbstruck horror as the billions invested here since the nation’s 1990 reunification were washed away.

Debris-clogged water gushed from the windows and doors of the sleek new train station, a pet project in the federal government’s more than $1-trillion renovation of the former Communist states in eastern Germany. Lovingly repaired baroque palaces transformed into hotels, museums and public offices are unusable, their basements flooded and electrical systems ruined. Hundreds of shops, restaurants and services have shut down in what should be the height of the tourist season, with sandbags blocking entrances and mud covering the floors.

The human toll of the past week’s catastrophic flooding across Central Europe amid torrential rain also continued to climb, with more than 100 lives now lost to drowning, accidents and failed rescue missions and hundreds of thousands of people forced to abandon their homes.

About 40,000 Germans prepared to evacuate downstream as far as Magdeburg, 120 miles northwest of Dresden, in anticipation of inundation. They included the entire 16,000 population of Bitterfeld, where a massive chemical industry complex was at risk of flooding after the Elbe broke through a dam.

Boats that were torn from their riverside moorings in the neighboring Czech Republic had to be blown up so they would sink before being carried downstream to Dresden, where they could have wiped out multimillion-dollar bridges. One Czech was killed when he was struck by flying debris from the explosions. In the Austrian town of Schwertberg, river-borne refuse being carried by the raging Danube tore through part of a 100-foot-long steel bridge.

It is the economic devastation visited on the millions of survivors that is increasingly drawing attention and dread.

In Germany alone, 20,000 houses have been destroyed and many more damaged. Most of the country’s grain and potato crops have been ruined; the national farmers association estimated that will mean at least $1.5 billion in losses.

Roads have been washed away, isolating towns such as the watchmaking enclave of Glashuette, which was one of the few economic bright spots in Saxony state.

Work Was Undone

Though no accurate estimate of the damage can be made until the waters recede, officials are already casting the disaster as one of unparalleled peacetime proportions. More than 4 million Germans have lost property or income.

“What we’re basically facing is a whole new start in rebuilding the east. We have to say it that simply,” Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told journalists in Berlin after touring the areas along the Elbe.

Dresden, the capital of Saxony, was the least economically depressed part of formerly Communist eastern Germany, which has struggled since reunification. The city’s relative prosperity was due largely to the generous investment of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to create the infrastructure and services needed to attract big industrial investment.

The costly building boom that began a dozen years ago helped bring new jobs to the state--at the AMD computer chip plant near Meissen, new Siemens and Motorola operations, and a Toyota production plant for air conditioning and electronics near Senftenberg. Those investments survived the flooding, but the railway damage could disrupt shipping.

The cultural offerings of Dresden that made Saxony an attractive choice for business will take months, if not years, to recover.

Struggling even before the flooding with 16% unemployment, Saxony is likely to suffer a further blow if, as expected, patrons abandon the damaged businesses in Dresden.

“The shop is OK, but the cellar is full of water and the whole air-conditioning and heating system is kaput,” said Regina Zeglin, whose Wempe jewelry shop was one of the few businesses open in the city’s historic Old Town. “We’ve been luckier than most, but it’s still going to mean considerable losses for us. Our turnover depends a lot on the tourists, and they won’t be coming anymore.”

Beautician Cathrin Below was at her Figaro salon to clean up and secure the premises against looters, who have struck a number of businesses. “We’ll probably go broke after this,” she said with more resignation than fear.

The Dresden station of the Deutsche Bahn railway network was probably the most costly and significant investment made here in the massive building boom aimed at upgrading Communist-era infrastructure. Not only have the flood waters claimed its cavernous lobby and adjacent shopping center, but hundreds of rail cars also stand in mucky water up to their windows. A Deutsche Bahn spokesman estimated the damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Hilton Hotel, another post-reunification project, was closed and evacuated as the river intruded.

A nearby underground parking garage, built with federal development funds, is among the flooded facilities yet to be assessed for permanent damage.

As the Elbe surged beneath Dresden’s stately stone bridges, its savaged booty traveled with it: uprooted trees, trash bins, doors, garden sheds, even a lunch wagon.

Already in a Slump

Germany was already in the grip of economic stagnation and struggling with 10% unemployment when the floods struck, but some economists say the damaged cities and ruined crops won’t be economic deathblows.

“There will be massive new reconstruction, and that can be a stimulation for the economy,” said Gustav Horn, a top official with the German Institute for Economic Research, but he added that insurance and government assistance will take a heavy toll on public coffers.

Saxony Gov. Georg Milbradt acknowledged that the losses are staggering for his state and that the bulk of the damage is to newly built or extensively renovated structures that were considered priorities in the post-reunification spending spree.

“We can’t say everything has been washed away that was built over the past 12 years, but it has certainly been a significant loss,” he told reporters at the restored baroque palace that is his government headquarters. “I don’t know how many billions has been invested in Dresden, but I know there was $100 million spent on this building alone.”

Dresden has a history of resilience, however. It was flattened by Allied bombing toward the end of World War II, leaving a landscape of rubble and hardly a significant structure standing. Communist planners hastily threw up prefabricated apartments after the war to house the homeless masses, and it was only after 1990 that the city recovered its imperial splendor.

Other Eastern European areas hit by the floods are in the same economically precarious position. Prague, the Czech capital that is a treasure trove of medieval architecture, had suffered at least $2 billion in damage before the waters began receding Wednesday. Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, also was under threat as rains resumed in Russia and Romania. In Austria, at least 10,000 homes were rendered uninhabitable.

Even the Czech Republic’s famous breweries were hurt. The Budejovicky Budvar producers of the original Budweiser beer had to shut down for two days because of water and power shortages.