The floods of 1944 were the worst ever in the Triesting valley. On 4 July 1944, there were severe floods, following heavy cloudbursts over the upper Triesting valley, in the vicinity of the Schöpfl mountain and in the Further valley. The narrow neck of the valley above Pottenstein was blocked by driftwood and the Fahrafeld Basin turned into a dammed lake. The dam broke and floodwaters up to 2 metres high surged through the valley. In the whole valley 188 people lost their lives, "the majority being foreign workers".[4][A 1][3]
^ abHelene Schießl, Erwin Schindler: Berndorfer Gemeindechronik, herausgegeben aus Anlass 100 Jahre Stadt Berndorf. Ed.: Stadtgemeinde Berndorf. pp. 24ff (in German)
^Walter Rieck: Kulturgeographie des Triestingtales. p. 150
Sources
Rieck, Walter (1957). Kulturgeographie des Triestingtales. Vienna, Univ., Diss.[1]
^The lower Triesting valley, in particular, was a centre of the armaments industry, in which a considerable number of foreign workers were used to replace those liable for military wartime service. The majority of foreigners used for this work were slave labourers: POWs of various nationalities, "transferees" from the East and the Balkans, "which had been occupied during the war by the German Wehrmacht" (Rieck, p. 147).
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