MAINZ, Germany — More than 1,000 people were still unaccounted for early Friday after raging floods in western Europe left more than 100 people dead and communities devastated as frantic rescue efforts entered a second day.
In Germany over 100 people were killed after heavy rains pounded the country's western states and caused rivers to burst their banks, turning streets into torrential rivers that left vehicles overturned and submerged in muddy waters, while some houses were reduced to rubble.
Storms also caused deadly flooding in neighboring Belgium, with at least 12 deaths reported as of Friday morning, while Luxembourg and the Netherlands were also hit with heavy rain.
At least 62 people were killed in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate alone, officials said, while 43 died in neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia.
As many as 1,500 people in the country were still assumed to be missing, with hundreds of soldiers deployed to aid the rescue effort.
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Officials said they hoped the high number of people still unaccounted for was due to mobile networks and internet connections going down, making it difficult for many to reach their loved ones.
Stranded residents had to be airlifted from rooftops and rescued in inflatable boats after seeing their homes inundated with floodwater.
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Anja Menzel told NBC News that her street in the city of Hagen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, was overcome with water.
“It was just this situation where the street was completely [turned] into a river, basically like a wild river," said Menzel, 34.
Menzel said residents had taken to the streets with shovels to clear roadways of debris.
Herbert Reul, the state's interior minister, said he had "never seen anything like this."
"The situation is enormously difficult and enormously dangerous,” Reul told a news conference. He said that rescuers had carried out "about 30,000 missions in the past days," including airlifting people from hospitals and care homes.
Andreas Friedrich, a German weather service spokesman, said Hagen and other areas affected had "very severe precipitation" that was comparable to the amount usually expected in two months.
The ensuing floods were some of the worst seen in Germany in decades, Freidrich said. Floods at the Elbe River in 2002, which saw 21 people killed in eastern Germany, were billed as a "once-in-a-century" event at the time.
However, he said the level of destruction caused by the disaster has much to do with where torrential rains hit.
"This is a special situation," he said. "In this region, we have small valleys, small rivers and of course, with the big amount of precipitation in a short time, we've had floods and damage in this region."
The death toll was the highest caused by a natural catastrophe in Germany since a North Sea flood in 1962 killed around 340 people.
