“Lothar” swept through the central plateau at speeds of up to 150 kilometers per hour on December 26, 1999, leaving behind a picture of destruction. Three people died in Aargau – including a 6-year-old boy who was killed by a tree in Suhr in front of his parents’ house. The following day, the “Aargauer Zeitung” reported on five special pages about the deadly Christmas oran. The memories of uprooted trees, blocked streets and covered roofs are still alive 20 years after «Lothar».
Erwin Städler had his first working day as district forester in the Zofingen region on October 1, 1999. “It was a tough time for me with a lot of new tasks anyway,” he says. That December 26th, he visited relatives in Eastern Switzerland. «It has already aired. But I only became aware of the extent of the storm when I saw the news on television in the evening. »The next day he broke off his vacation and set off for Aargau. “The further I drove west, the worse it looked,” he recalls. In Staffelbach, where he lived at the time, the horizon was different. Where there was dense forest before the storm, only single trees still rose into the sky.
Erwin Städler, then 34 years old, called the foresters across the forest district to get a first overview of the damage. Everyone said the same thing: “We can’t get into the forest at all.” They worked their way slowly over the following weeks and months. Priority was given to roads and important access routes. Only then did it come to the forest. The forest rangers had deliberately not cleared certain forest roads so that people never even had the idea of going into the forest. “It was just too dangerous,” says Erwin Städler.
Many foresters were devastated after the hurricane. “Of course, they identify very much with their forest,” he says. After the storm, the plant they had worked on for years no longer existed. In financial terms, the hurricane was a disaster for the forest owners, says Erwin Städler. «But for nature, ‹Lothar› was not a disaster. Nature can deal with such events. »Often they are even an opportunity. Biodiversity in the forest has not decreased over the past 20 years, but rather increased. “Thanks to ‹Lothar›, a lot of light and warmth came into the forest and various species benefited from it,” says Erwin Städler. The willowherb, for example, grows immediately on bare surfaces and the wood that remained after the storm would have benefited a great many species of beetles and mushrooms.
Foresters dealt with the storm damage differently
Lothar did not change the philosophy of the forest. Even before the storm, people wanted to make the forest more natural again. But unlike after the hurricane Vivian in February 1990, when forest owners received federal contributions for the damage they caused, after Lothar they consciously invested in reforestation. “It was noticed that the money went directly to the sawmills after” Vivian “without making a difference in the damaged forest,” says Erwin Städler.
Foresters in Aargau have dealt differently with the storm damage after «Lothar». This can be seen, for example, on the border between Staffelbach and Uerkheim. While the forester from Uerkheim wanted young trees as quickly as possible and actively helped with planting, the one in Staffelbach waited to allow natural reforestation. He even left all the trees on an area of about five hectares. They are still there to this day and are reminiscent of the worst storm in human history.
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