More Than 1000 People Missing and 81 Dead Following Heavy Floods in Germany
According to German broadcaster ARD, the number of people who died in the heavy floods in the western part of Germany increased to 81 on Friday in what is Germany’s worst mass loss of life in years.
Gathogo Wanjiru 
Around 1,300 people were missing in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne, the district government said on Facebook.
Mobile phone networks are lost in some of the flood-stricken regions, which means that family and friends were unable to track down their loved ones.
Overflow Rivers swept through towns and villages in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
On Friday morning, houses collapsed in Erftstadt near Cologne, and rescue crews were struggling to help residents who had returned to their houses despite the warnings, the Cologne district government said on Facebook.
According to the reports, many people were still in their houses and several others were missing. A gas leak was further hampering rescue workers as they tried to reach stranded people by boat.
One dam close to the Belgium border, the Rurtalsperre, was flooded overnight while another one, the Steinbachtalsperre, was unstable.
