The call from the volunteer fire department arrived on Friday morning at 09:15am. By 10:15 Kai Cooper, an instructor at the Arvato subsidiary Mohn Media, was already in his car on the way to Schönebeck in Saxony-Anhalt. Martin Frenz, an electronics engineer at Mohn Media, was just coming home from his night shift when he got the call. He, too, didn’t think twice about whether he would go to help in the flood zone. It was a similar story for three other Mohn Media employees: Lucien Deux, a mechatronics engineer, Marc Letmade, a department head at the company’s bindery, and Claudia Sinnerbrink, an account manager in the Action Print department. All five helped out in various capacities in Schönebeck, which was badly hit by the flood. The five volunteers told in an interview for the Bertelsmann Intranet what they experienced in Schönebeck and what left the most lasting impressions.
Despite their years of experience in the volunteer fire department or the German Red Cross, the five volunteers all agree that they had never experienced anything like this year's flood. "Of course, you practice for all possible situations, and may have even pulled someone who is severely injured out of a car at some point, but what we experienced in Schönebeck was something entirely different," says Kai Cooper. Lucien Deux agrees and tells how he and his aid team had been preparing for the upcoming assignment, although he says you couldn’t really call it proper preparation because of the lack of time. "In the morning, on our drive to Schönebeck, we reviewed in theory what we needed to know about dike construction, and that had to suffice," says Lucien. Claudia, who has worked for the Red Cross for 20 years, headed for Schönebeck with her response team from Verl and a large refrigerated truck full of food and drink. When they got there, the first load was distributed, but rather than taking a rest, they immediately reloaded the truck. Claudia particularly remembers one moment: "We were just serving breakfast to all the helpers when the announcement came that a dike was threatening to collapse. Within seconds the long queues had vanished and everyone was sitting in their emergency vehicles and driving off to help at the dike in question. In that moment it became very clear how explosive the whole situation was," she says.
The fact that five Mohn Media employees were sent to Schönebeck of all places is because following the last "flood of the century" in 2002, NRW “district reserves” were formed from various aid agencies, which were then sectored for a particular area. "It was all very professionally organized," says Marc. "Everybody knew what they had to do - the helpers entered their names on lists and were meticulously allocated." Kai was one of the people responsible for the coordination, which included setting up a helicopter landing pad. "That was a real challenge because I'd never done anything like it."
The five helpers say they were also very happy about the understanding shown by their colleagues and bosses. "Although I couldn’t even tell my boss when I would be back, he let me go as a matter of course." says Claudia Sinnerbrink. Kai Cooper says his colleagues were immediately willing to cover for him at work: "I thought that was really great."
The mayor of Schönebeck has announced that his town will host a thank-you party for all the volunteers in August, and the five Mohn Media staff will be there as well.
