Lech floods in 1910

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The Lech flood in 1910 was the strongest known flood of the Lech . It caused great damage along the entire Lech. The city of Augsburg was hardest hit by the disaster .

course

The alpine river Lech, the second largest tributary of the Bavarian Danube behind the Inn , has had strong floods since time immemorial. Its river bed was originally mostly flat, miles wide and entwined . Almost every year it swelled to a multiple of its normal width and kept looking for a new bed in its gravel. Corrections to its river bed from the end of the Middle Ages to the 19th century were primarily intended to make it raftable ; they increased its flow speed, which made it deeper and deeper. From Augsburg to its confluence with the Danube, the Lech has flowed in an artificially regulated bed since the 1850s, but upstream it was still largely natural.

In June 1910 there was still a lot of snow in the Tyrolean mountains, which on June 14th caused heavy downpours to melt within a short time. The Lech swelled into a torrential stream due to the influx of precipitation and meltwater. In the Tyrolean Lechtal he tore away seven bridges and numerous trift clauses and trift barriers fell victim to him. At Steeg it carried almost 300 cubic meters of water per second - compared to an average of only 12 cubic meters per second.

At that time there was no Forggensee that could have absorbed the high water peaks. On the evening of June 15, the Lech near Landsberg reached a flow rate of over 1000 cubic meters per second according to measurements at the time, and over 1400 cubic meters per second according to today's estimate, and there destroyed the Karolinen weir . In the lowlands of the Lechfeld it flowed up to four kilometers wide. On the right it reached almost as far as the edge of the settlement of Mering and on the left as far as the town of Haunstetten .

In Rain , five kilometers from the confluence with the Danube, the entire area north of the old town was flooded and caused great damage in the so-called suburb (Donauwörther Strasse area). In Oberndorf am Lech , all local roads were under water. The peak discharge at the mouth of the Lech on June 16, 1910 was measured at 1250 cubic meters per second (mean discharge 116 cubic meters).

Other rivers such as the Iller also caused severe floods at the same time and caused great damage.

The destruction of the high drain weir

The lock house with 350-year-old linden tree and high bass restaurant before the 1910 flood.

At the Augsburg Hochablass , the yellow-brown flood first tore down a section of the weir, which was built of wood but was basically flood-proof, at the two gravel passages, and then, because of the gap created, further parts of the weir up to Floßgasse . The water then destroyed the Stadtbach main lock, the historic main lock building from 1798 and the restoration building. With greatest efforts succeeded in being moved military and the fire brigade, the fountain work at high drain , a building from which the drinking water supply of Augsburg completely depended, by block of the local bank with Raubäumen preserve gravel-filled crates, sandbags and other natural materials from destruction.

To reduce the risk of further damage, the entire high drainage weir was blown up except for a small remaining stump on the Upper Bavarian bank. The river tore long stretches of the bank below the weir, where its bed was deeply deepened, and destroyed seven properties on the Hochzoller Ufer. Parts of Hochzoll, Lechhausen and Jakobervorstadt were flooded. The tracks on Line I of the Augsburg Local Railway were washed away and damaged. The 52 meter high church tower of St. Pankratius in Lechhausen was badly damaged. The railway brigade broke, putting the railway bridge at Hochzoll in great danger, as its central pillar threatened to be washed away. In Gersthofen, a large piece of the seven-year-old railway bridge was torn away.

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The total damage caused by the Lech flood of 1910 for the city of Augsburg is given as around 5 million  marks .

The flood disaster was followed by great hardship for Augsburg due to a lack of water, because the rupture of the high drain weir caused the capital stream fed from it and the Lech canals of Augsburg to be supplied dry. All hydropower plants on these canals stood still. Large companies switched to coal-fired steam engines, while small ones completely stopped operating.

Since all of the city's sewage drained through these canals, drying them out also endangered the health of the population. However, a short-term reconstruction of the high drainage weir was out of the question. Therefore, a new temporary Lechanstich was laid further upstream in order to supply the capital stream with water again.

A new high drainage weir

The new high drainage weir
The new high discharge weir during a flood in August 2005 with 800 m³ / s

In February 1911, work began on the construction of a new high-drain weir, which for the first time was made of reinforced concrete using the latest technology. It was built about 200 meters from the old location, the construction costs amounted to 1.5 million marks. The official water discharge took place on July 28, 1912.

In 1914 King Ludwig III visited completed the new Hochablass with the royal family, a monument on the left bank of the weir still reminds of this today.

literature

  • Rupert Zettl: Lechauf-lechab: worth knowing, lovable . 2nd Edition. Wißner, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-89639-316-2 , pp. 341 ff .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Mayer, quoted in Rupert Zettl: Lechauf-lechab: Wissenswertes, Liebbarenes . 2nd Edition. Wißner, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-89639-316-2 , pp. 342 .
  2. ↑ The measuring methods of that time gave lower measured values.
  3. ↑ Donauwörther Zeitung of June 5, 2010 , accessed on September 8, 2018

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