Mortal Storm

It was 1 a.m. when the townspeople of the north German port of Cuxhaven were startled from their sleep by an eerie echo of the past: the wail of air-raid sirens. The howling horns, however, did not signal an air attack but the breeching of the town's dikes by one of the worst storms of the century.

Down the coast of Europe it screamed last week, leaving a trail of death and disaster in its wake. Raging seas and roaring winds that reached a velocity of 177 m.p.h. blitzed dikes, flooded cities, inundated farm land, and capsized ships from Denmark to the British Isles. So strong were the gales at Britain's Catterick racetrack that gusts blew race horses off their legs and sent their jockeys flying.

Hardest hit was the north German coast. Between Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven, the water quickly rose to rooftop level. As the dikes of Bremerhaven crumbled, water flooded the city's zoo, drowning all the caged animals. Hamburg lost both its light and power for two days, and in its modern underground garages, scores of automobiles disappeared beneath the oily waves. Driven from their holes by the floods, packs of rats fed on the carcasses of dead animals. Fearing the pollution of the water supply, authorities flew water in by helicopter to combat the threat of typhoid and cholera.

More than 35,000 German and other NATO troops were committed to the rescue operations. Even floatable barrels were pressed into service to save flood victims. German air force planes dropped 350,000 sandbags to plug holes in the dikes; helicopters fluttered over drowning villages picking up survivors and dropping milk for starving infants. In Hamburg, Danish frogmen dived beneath the waters to hunt for bodies: for six hours two Bundeswehr soldiers stood in shoulder-deep water holding two children piggyback. The parents of the children finally succumbed to exhaustion and slipped beneath the flood tide. It was so cold that many people froze to death on rooftops before rescuers arrived.

At week's end Europe was still mopping up. The death toll rose to 326--307 in West Germany alone--and property damage was estimated at $350 million.

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