The following two paragraphs are taken from a news story. I'm wondering if the past-tense form "hit" and the present-perfect "has hit" should have been swithced around. At the very least, should the "has hit" have been changed into the simple past "hit"?

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> At least 189 people are dead and hundreds more remain missing after catastrophic flooding **hit** large swaths of western Europe, with tens of thousands unable to return to their homes and many still left without access to power and drinking water.
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> The flooding, caused by unprecedented rainfall, **has hit** parts of western Germany before shifting to neighboring Belgium and the Netherlands.
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