FFive months have passed since heavy rain over the tributaries into the valley caused the Ahr to grow into a huge river, since the river swept away trees, bridges, cars and houses and flooded entire settlements. If you take the rail replacement service downstream to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, you can see along the road: uprooted trees, gutted houses, crumbled asphalt, the piled-up individual parts of a railway line, the cut and dented steel remains of a bridge. Other stone bridges break off after two or three arches over the water.
It is actually a coincidence, which results from the situation in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, that the “Institute for Qualifying Innovation Research and Consulting”, IQIB for short, is now involved in two projects dealing with reconstruction. The IQIB is a subsidiary of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). On the outside wall of the institute above the McDonald’s there is still the word “European Academy”, that was a cooperation between the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the DLR, from which the IQIB emerged. The water reached the parking lot in front of it.
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