I SURVIVED!

THE PEOPLE IN THESE THREE STORIES HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON EXCEPT FOR ONE THING THEY FACED DEATH AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT

- Lisa Fitterman

... MY FLOODED APARTMENT
CHRISTIAN FLEISCHMANN, 33

I FINALLY CLIMBED INTO bed at 1:20 in the morning. It was 15 July 2021, and my friends had helped me celebrate my 31st birthday in the basement apartment of my sister’s home, where I lived.

Earlier in the day I had prepared for the unlikely event of a flood. We are about 536 metres from the banks of the Ahr River in Sinzig, Germany. It had been raining buckets that week and authorities had issued a flood warning, though not for where I was. Still, I’d placed sandbags on the floor outside my garden door and piled electronics and clothing on tables and the couch just in case water managed to seep through. Before my friends left, they laughed at me for doing that, but I thought, Why take a chance?

As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of rushing water, as if I were lying beside a waterfall instead of in my bedroom. When I swung my legs off the bed, I was shocked by the sensation of cold water lapping against my knees and rising fast.

It has to be from a burst pipe in the bathroom, I thought. Shivering and in darkness, I grabbed my cellphone and turned on the flashlight. When I stepped from the bedroom to the hallway, I saw it wasn’t a burst pipe at all. Instead, water was shooting through the gaps of the garden door that leads from my living room to a set of concrete stairs up to the backyard. The water must have breached the sandbags. All around me, my things began to float by: chairs, bookshelves, pieces of my drum set.

I admit it, I began to panic. The Ahr, usually such a quiet, slow-moving river, had violently burst its banks. And now I had to get out—fast!