Apple will donate to flood relief efforts in Western Europe, where torrential rains have ravaged Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and surrounding areas.
More than 150 are confirmed dead in unprecedented flooding in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, with high waters damaging roads, homes, bridges, and other infrastructure. Another 1,300 people are missing, with multiple small villages devastated by flood waters.
Melissa Eddy for The New York Times:
German authorities said late Thursday that after confirming scores of deaths, they were unable to account for at least 1,300 people.
That staggering figure was announced after swift-moving water from swollen rivers surged through cities and villages in two western German states, where the death toll passed 90 on Friday in the hardest-hit regions and other fatalities were expected.
At least 11 more people were reported to have died in Belgium, according to authorities who also ordered inhabitants of downtown Liège to evacuate as the Meuse River, which flows through its center, overflowed its banks.
The storms and resulting high water also battered neighboring Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as a slow-moving weather system threatened to dump even more rain on the inundated region overnight and into Friday.
MacDailyNews Update: Police said that more than 90 people are now known to have died in western Germany’s Ahrweiler county, one of the worst-hit areas, and more casualties are feared, the AP reports. Another 43 people were confirmed dead in neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia state. Belgium’s national crisis center put the country’s confirmed death toll at 24 and said it expects the number to rise.