Search for missing goes on as toll rises in Europe floods

Berlin, Jul 16 (AP):
Officials in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia say the death toll in floods there has increased to 43, pushing the total number of fatalities in Germany and Belgium above 100.
Rescuers are scrambling to find survivors and rescue people trapped in houses at risk of collapse.
Hundreds of people are still missing and thousands are homeless after days of heavy storms that caused flash floods across western Germany and Belgium.
Some 1,300 people in Germany were still reported missing, though authorities said efforts to contact them could be hampered by disrupted roads and phone connections.
In a provisional tally, the Belgian death toll has risen to 12, with 5 people still missing, local authorities and media report early Friday.
The flash floods this week followed days of heavy rainfall which turned streams and streets into raging torrents that swept away cars and caused houses to collapse across the region.
Rescuers were rushing Friday to help people trapped in their homes in the town of Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne. Regional authorities said several people had died after their houses collapsed due to subsidence, and aerial pictures showed what appeared to be a massive sinkhole.
Three people were rescued from the Wurm River in Heinsberg county.
The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Armin Laschet, has called an emergency Cabinet meeting Friday. The 60-year-old’s handling of the flood disaster is widely seen as a test for his ambitions to succeed Merkel as chancellor in Germany’s national election on Sept. 26. Malu Dreyer, the governor of neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate state, said the disaster showed the need to speed up efforts to curb global warming. ‘We’ve experienced droughts, heavy rain and flooding events several years in a row, including in our state,’ she told the Funke media group. ‘Climate chance isn’t abstract anymore. We are experiencing it up close and painfully.’
She accused the Laschet and Merkel’s center-right Union bloc of hindering efforts to achieve greater greenhouse gas reductions in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and a major emitter of planet-warming gases.
The German army has deployed 900 soldiers to help with the rescue and clear-up efforts.
Thousands of people remain homeless after their houses were destroyed or deemed at-risk by authorities, including several villages around the Steinbach reservoir that experts say could collapse under the weight of the floods.
Across the border in Belgium, most of the drowned were found around Liege, where the rains hit hardest. Skies were largely overcast in eastern Belgium, with hopes rising that the worst of the calamity was over.
In the southern Dutch province of Limburg, troops piled sandbags to strengthen a 1.1 kilometer (0.7 miles) stretch of dike along the Maas river and police helped evacuate some low-lying neighborhoods.
Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the government was officially declaring flood-hit regions a disaster area, meaning businesses and residents are eligible for compensation for damage. Meanwhile, sustained rainfall in Switzerland has caused several rivers and lakes to break their banks.