From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Wed Sep 07 2005 - 20:59:40 BST
Dear Platt,
You seem 6 Sep 14:52 -0400 to have misunderstood me when you wrote:
"Thanks for reporting on the Netherlands plans (or lack thereof) for
evacuation in case the dikes break. Frankly, I'm surprised. I thought if
anybody would be thoroughly prepared, it would be the Dutch. Maybe it's
human nature to believe "it can't happen to me." In any case, I hope the
Dutch faith in their dikes is never tested."
Dutch government DOES have good plans for evacuation in case the dikes
break. Faith in Dutch dikes IS regularly tested. (Last time I think last
summer when a few minor ones broke because of drought and flooded a a few
blocks of nearby houses with a few tens of centimers of water. Only the
content of a canal was spread over a fairly limited area. A few years ago
the Maas, the main rain-fed river in our delta, flooded a polder with
relatively few inhabitants. The river flooding Gert-Jan described 6 Sep
17:43 +0200. All were evacuated in time.) Casualties and economic losses are
limited, because especially dikes in more densily inhabited and economically
more crucial areas are kept in much better shape and much stronger. Every
time a dike fails a minor test this is checked and re-checked. (After that
river flooding a few years ago a major programme was started to strengthen
dikes along the whole of the Maas and to give the river more space to carry
even the water resulting from even more unlikely periods of high rainfall
near its sources in Belgium and France.) The only real big test our dikes
failed in relatively recent history was this Watersnood in 1953 (not 1954 as
I wrote abusively before). That was the sea (not a river or a canal)
flooding (therefore) a much larger area and above some rooftops, so it DID
cause a lot of casualties (1835 dead to be precise), a national trauma for
the generation then living and a major national investment programma. This
so-called 'Deltaplan' was meant to prevent it ever happening again. Whole
sea-arms have been closed and hundreds of kilometers of dikes protecting us
from the sea have been strengthened considerably in some 20 years time.
We DO have good plans for evacuation even if the population at large doesn't
know a lot about them, but we have even better plans for preventing the need
for evacuation and ... a lot of engineers making a living out of
implementing these prevention plans.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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