Heavy rainfalls and storms pounded Germany’s western states and caused rivers to burst their banks, inundating towns and villages. Torrential overflow swept away vehicles, destroyed roads and bridges and reduced some houses to rubble. Some survivors were trapped on their rooftops for hours before they were airlifted by helicopters.

The flood's damage and death toll—about 200 dead—made it one of the deadliest disasters to hit the country in more than half a century. During the height of the flooding, some 1,300 people were reported missing in just one German district, Ahrweiler.

Phone and power lines are still down in some areas, at least two highway roads need fundamental repair. The damage to infrastructure hampered immediate rescue efforts and threatened to leave the affected regions facing a long and difficult road to recovery.

At least four firefighters in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia lost their lives during rescue operations since flooding began Wednesday, according to Bernd Schneider, chairman of the NRW Firefighters Association.

Dams across the region reached their capacities and threaten to overflow amid the massive rainfall. The flood, damaged water facilities and created a water shortage in some regions.

Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the badly-hit town of Schuld, personally surveying the damage and speaking to residents and emergency workers. She described the situation as "terrifying" and called for more to be done to tackle climate change in the wake of the floods.

Over a thousand soldiers and more than 200 military vehicles have been deployed in western Germany over the last few days, as volunteers line up to help flood victims. As the water begins to recede, questions are emerging over whether residents received timely warnings before the floods. Critics say that if the country was adequately prepared for disaster, the loss would have been much less.

The Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria were the deadliest in Australia's history. They came on the heels of a record heat wave — with scorching temperatures reaching the mid-40s Celsius (around 113 degrees Fahrenheit) for several days before the blazes started. In the dry heat, all it took was a spark to ignite an apocalyptic firestorm.

As many as 400 individual fires broke out on February 7, 2009. When it was all over, they had killed 173 people and razed 2,133 homes in addition to hundreds of other buildings. Whole towns had been annihilated. In many cases, people who had lost everything did not return to rebuild.

David Barton's home in Marysville, Victoria, burned down during the Black Saturday bushfires. He and his then-wife survived but the traumatic experience still haunts him and contributed to the eventual failure of his marriage. He wasn't alone. Many other couples who lived through the events split up. Eventually, he returned to Marysville alone.

Fanned by strong winds, the firefronts of bushfires can grow to more than 100 meters (328 feet) high. In such extreme situations, flight is the only option. Some of those who tried to defend their homes using their garden hoses during the Black Saturday fires were later found dead in their yards, some with melted garden hoses still in their hands.

Bushfire weather in Australia has become more frequent over the past 30 years, and Australia's climate commission has concluded that: "The intensity and seasonality of large bushfires in southeast Australia appears to be changing, with climate change a possible contributing factor."

But fires as such are not a new phenomenon on the world's driest inhabited continent. And since they have always been a fact of life, Australia's fauna and flora have adapted to these conditions. Species that can deal with fires and their aftermath have thrived.

Eucalyptus is one such species. The trees are true survivors when it comes to bushfires. But they don't just survive; they even promote fires. In fact, eucalyptus leaves contain an oil with such a high degree of octane that it can be used as fuel. The eucalyptus fares better in blazes than other trees, so fires help it eliminate competition.

Several birds of prey, including the black kite, take this a step further. They pick up burning branches from existing fires and drop them elsewhere to start new ones. As the flames spread, they drive small rodents and birds out of hiding, making it easy for the "firehawks" to catch them.

Many fire-resistant plants, including some eucalyptus, posess a lignotuber. This thick woody section at their base contains buds from which new stems can sprout. They also store starch, which provides fuel for the plants to grow when they cannot photosynthesize. This allows them to rebound quickly after a fire.

The water is slowly receding, but the disaster is far from over. In devastated riverside towns in Germany, people are only slowly working their way through dealing with what the flood has left behind: bulks of mud and piles of rubbish.

The flood completely destroyed Jutta Schelleckes' apartment. She and her injured husband had been living in the mess for two days before firefighters arrived and decided to escort them out of their apartment and help them find shelter. Jutta is only one of the thousands of citizens whose homes have become uninhabitable.

What used to be people's furniture and household items has now turned into waste that fills up the streets. If not removed quickly, the waste can hinder rescue operations and impose safety risks to relief workers and residents. The mud can dry into a rock-hard surface that glues rubble to the streets.

With volunteers' help, residents have started to clean up their battered homes and shops. Garbage trucks drive back and forth to remove the aftermath's waste from the streets. In Trier, one of the severely affected regions, 14,000 tons of flood waste was collected during the weekend, the spokesperson of the region's waste management association told public broadcaster SWR.

In addition to an army of volunteers in disaster zones, countless solidarity initiatives were created to collect donations. The flow of donations quickly became overwhelming, to the extent that several aid organizations announced they have no more capacity to receive more donations. While the COVID pandemic has kept people apart, the disaster has brought communities in the region together.