With at least 184 deaths, the floods are the deadliest natural disaster in Germany since the North Sea flood of 1962. 1,300 people had been initially reported as missing on July 16, but mostly due to mobile networks being down in some regions which made it difficult to call people. It was considered unlikely that the number of deaths would rise that high, and while on 19 July the exact number of missing persons remained unclear, search was ongoing for at least 150 people. Some 15,000 police, soldiers and emergency service workers have been deployed in Germany to help with the search and rescue.