heyThe low “Zenep” caused storm surges, road accidents and rail traffic failures early in the weekend. At least three people died in the storm. The fire brigade counted thousands of operations, mostly caused by felling trees, flying objects or damaged buildings – in North Rhine-Westphalia alone they deployed more than 12,000 operations as of Saturday afternoon.
Read F+ 3 months now for €1/week and get access to all articles on FAZ.NET.
Due to storm damage, rail traffic in northern Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia will be severely affected until at least Monday afternoon. There are delays and train cancellations, Deutsche Bahn (DB) announced on Saturday evening and continues to advise suspension of travel to the affected areas. Until the end of the day, no long-distance trains to Dortmund, Hanover and north of Berlin should run on Saturdays, as well as ICE trains between Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and Berlin, EC/IC trains between Berlin and Dresden, ICE/IC trains between Berlin and Dresden. Trains Frankfurt (Main) or Berlin to Amsterdam and EC trains between Berlin and Warsaw. “The forecast for Sunday and Monday remains difficult,” said DB spokesman Achim Stauss. “There has been huge damage to the railway infrastructure.” More than 1000 km of track was damaged. “Our clearing teams are practically working on the border.”
DB has again raised the goodwill rules, Stauss said. All the passengers who wish to postpone or postpone their plans for the period from February 17 to February 21 due to the ongoing stormy weather can either use their already booked long distance tickets flexibly. or add it up to and including February 28. Train connection has been withdrawn with savings prices and super savings prices. According to the DB, there has been damage to railway infrastructure, particularly in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia.
The center of the hurricane zone is in northern Germany. In addition to Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium were particularly affected by the storm, known internationally as “Eunice”. In Great Britain, about 200,000 homes had no electricity on Saturday, meanwhile 1.4 million homes were affected. A peak gust of 196 kilometers per hour was measured on the Isle of Wight – the strongest wind gust ever recorded in England.
Insurance claims exceed billion mark
According to a preliminary estimate, “Zenep” caused insured losses of more than 900 million euros. The storm was the most intense since “Kirill” in 2007, said management consultant Mayerthol Sims Kohlers (MSK), who specializes in actuarial mathematics. The company estimated the insured damage from the previous hurricane “Yelenia” at 500 million euros. The total damage caused by hurricanes is generally high, sometimes quite significant. Therefore it is believed that this amount will exceed one billion euros.
At least one of the three stormtroopers was a 17-year-old man who died in Hopstein (NRW) as a passenger. According to the police, the driver of the car may have avoided a branch and thus left the road. According to preliminary findings, the NRW Interior Ministry counted him as a stormtrooper. A 56-year-old driver was killed when his car rammed into a tree on the road near Altenberg in North Rhine-Westphalia, according to police.
