Problems with water level during demolition at Carola Bridge

After the demolition of another part of the destroyed section of Dresden's Carola Bridge, the demolition concept has to be changed. The problem is the level of the Elbe, the water is still overflowing the part of the bridge that has been lying in it since the night of the collapse. "We can't take action there," said Holger Kalbe from the city's road and civil engineering department. During the current demolition work on the Old Town side, another piece of debris fell into the river. "As a result, the main flow is now on the Neustädter Ufer."

According to Kolbe, a construction road cannot be poured there to remove the other remains of strand C, unlike planned. Apart from that, however, the demolition of its remains is "right on schedule." However, there are plans to remove the debris from the river from the Old Town side to create more space in the river.

Water level of the Elbe too high for original plan

Until now, the buckled sections of the route on the Neustadt bank, which protrude diagonally into the river, were to be separated from the piers and salvaged, and demolition excavators were to move onto the debris that had been lying in the river for five weeks. This is only possible when the water level is below 2.30 meters - currently it is 3.56 meters at the Dresden gauge.

The Carola Bridge consisted of three traffic lines. On the night of 11 September, the western section C with the streetcar line collapsed over a length of around 100 meters for reasons that are still unknown. In a race against time, emergency services from the fire department and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), supported by the German Armed Forces and special equipment, removed the first collapsed remains of the destroyed bridge section on the Neustadt side in the days that followed - just in time before the floods.