Hurricane low Ylenia sweeps over Hesse

• OfOliver Teutsch

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Truck blocks A5 for hours. Advice center of the child protection association Frankfurt damaged.

The hurricane Ylenia caused disabilities in many parts of Hesse on Thursday. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the storm blew its strongest on the Wasserkuppe in the Rhön, where hurricane gusts of up to 121 kilometers per hour were measured on Thursday night. The impact of the storm was much greater elsewhere, however.

On the A5 between Bad Homburger Kreuz and Friedberg, a truck with a trailer was blown over by a gust of wind around five in the morning. According to a police spokesman, the trailer was loaded with styrofoam plates and was probably too light for hurricane low Ylenia. The 40-year-old driver from the Wetzlar area suffered only minor injuries, but the effects of the accident severely hampered the morning commuter traffic in the direction of Frankfurt. The overturned truck and trailer blocked all lanes towards Frankfurt. Traffic was backed up by up to twelve kilometers, and the detour routes were also overloaded. When the driver, who had been taken to the hospital as a precaution, was released, hundreds of people in their cars were still stuck in traffic. The rescue work was finally completed shortly before 1 p.m., but the traffic jam only cleared up in the afternoon.

Elsewhere, too, the storm kept rescue workers on their toes. In southern Hesse, trees blocked the roads near Ober-Ramstadt (Darmstadt-Dieburg district) and Astheim (Groß-Gerau district). According to the police, a truck drove into a tree lying on a district road near Rüsselsheim.

Because of a fallen tree, the railway line between Dreieich-Buchschlag and Langen (Offenbach district) was closed. Among other things, the S-Bahn lines 3 and 4 were affected. According to the information, there were delays and partial cancellations, and an emergency bus service was set up. Delays and partial cancellations had to be expected between Langgöns (Giessen district) and Butzbach (Wetterau district), the railway said.

The police headquarters in Wiesbaden spoke of a good two dozen operations in the Limburg and Weilburg area, in the Hochtaunus district and in the Rheingau-Taunus district. In three cases, trees fell on cars.

Around 30 emergency calls were received at the control center of the central Hesse police headquarters in Gießen. A tree fell on the roof of a house in Dillenburg. On the federal highway 49, a flying construction site sign smashed the side window of a moving car. On the B255 between Driedorf and Herborn, a driver rammed a tree lying on the road.

In Münchhausen north of Marburg, the power went out after a tree fell on an overhead line. In Gladenbach in the Marburg-Biedenkopf district, a truck hit a traffic light that had been blown over. In the Werra-Meißner district, a 61-year-old driver crashed into a fallen tree. A trailer was thrown through the air in Eschwege. Bricks fell from one house and the chimney of another snapped.

In Frankfurt, the effects were comparatively mild. A fire brigade spokesman reported more than 30 operations because of the storm, but there was “nothing dramatic”. Stefan Schäfer, Managing Director of the Frankfurt Child Protection Association, sees things a little differently. In the early hours of the morning, an old oak tree fell on the office of the Child Protection Association in the Orangery in Günthersburgpark. No one was injured, but the tree damaged the building’s dormer and rendered the aid organization’s counseling rooms unusable until further notice. “The renovation work will drag on for a few weeks,” fears Schäfer.

The fire brigade issued a ban on entering the building and cordoned off the area. The rest of the work was then the responsibility of the green space office. The first approached with too small a device for a rescue. Another oak tree in the immediate vicinity also had to be felled due to storm damage.

It was lighter in the Frankfurt Palmengarten. There were only a few broken branches, said spokesman Sebastian Klimek. The palm garden would remain closed to the public on Friday “for purely security reasons”, as would the zoo.

After the storm weakened over the course of Thursday, DWD spokesman Felix Dietzsch announced the next storm low for Friday. This will reach its peak in Hesse late on Friday, but will subside faster than hurricane low Ylenia. with dpa