In July 2021, we had rather a lot of rain in NRW, western Germany.

This is a town just south of Bonn, where some of my friends live (about 50km south of me):

They were away on holiday when the rain arrived, and they returned on Wednesday 14th July to their (approximately 3 year-old newly-built) house to find that water had reached almost to the top of the stairs in their house. The ground floor was entirely flooded; the first floor remained untouched.

This is their lawn:

On the side of the house, you can see a line where the water came up to (the upper windows go down to floor level; the water didn't reach the upper floor inside):

This used to be their kitchen:

Their car remained in the garage while they were away on holiday - the inside of it is as bad as it looks from the outside - it's a total write-off:

...but at least it fared better than some of their neighbours' cars:

Friends helped them remove the furniture from the ground floor, so that it can be taken away as rubbish (notice also someone's hut over to the right, turned on its side):

After a few days, they now have running water from the taps again (although not drinkable), but there's no electricity in the entire area (all recovery works is being done with portable generators), and it's expected to be several weeks before the gas supply can be restored.

It's going to take months for the area to get back to normal life.