The Dutch have been training for centuries to cooperate together in the face of a direct threat to the country: water. In the Netherlands, 60% of the population lives in areas susceptible to flooding, either from river flooding or coastal storms; 25% of the 17 million inhabitants live in a territory below sea level. For this reason, they are not only protected by the 3,700 kilometers of flood defense, but also by a very well-oiled in which health services, ambulances, police, firefighters and other public citizen assistance organizations collaborate.
A Dutch government website mentions steps to take in the event of a flood, such as evacuating vertically – to upper floors – or having an emergency kit prepared. But the majority of the population ignores these indications: “We take for granted that our protection system will work,” says Jan Verkade, a hydrometeorologist at Deltares, the National Institute for Water and Subsoil Research.
Deltares is part of the national advisory team responsible for continuously monitoring the country’s watersheds around the clock. There are two other teams, one for the coast and another for the two large artificial lakes created after the closure of two water inlets from the North Sea.
Jan was on duty on the days in July 2021 when the country experienced the most severe flooding in decades, in the Limburg region, where the city of Maastricht is located. “Heavy rains in Germany, Belgium and to a lesser extent here have caused a constant rise in the Meuse, which rarely happens in summer: in just two days, its flow reached the highest level ever recorded,” says -he. In two days, it rained what it usually rains throughout the month of July, between 150 and 200 millimeters, which is predicted to happen in this region only once every 1,000 years.
The region’s emergency coordination cell launched measures to evacuate people, they did not doubt our forecasts and applied the protocol according to the alert level that we transmitted to them.
Jan Verkade
— Hydrometeorologist at the Deltares Institute
As the hydrologist responsible for data on the Meuse, Verkade informed the rest of the team that the worst-case scenario of the river reaching a flow rate of 3,700 cubic meters per second was possible. . “The region’s emergency coordination cell launched measures to evacuate people, they did not doubt our forecasts and applied the protocol according to the alert level that we transmitted to them,” summarizes- he.
Before the National Institute of Meteorology issued the red alert on July 14 at 6:10 p.m., the Army distributed sandbags in at-risk communities, campsites had been evacuated and dependent elderly people began to be evacuated. In total, 30,000 people were evacuated from five municipalities. Finally, towns further south, such as Valkenburg, were flooded, but the river level remained a little lower than expected. There were no deaths. In Germany and Belgium, where the rains were heavier and response times shorter, floods claimed the lives of 238 people.
Regional Emergency Coordination Teams
“In the Netherlands, the impact would have been much greater if we had not had the emergency coordination unit,” explains Jan Verkade. Created in 2010 and dependent on the municipalities, these are multidisciplinary teams made up of representatives of health services, ambulances, police, firefighters and other public citizen aid organizations.
There are 25 veiligheids regions throughout the country, through which all information relating to a possible emergency passes and coordinates the intervention. One of the mayors of these districts constitutes the highest authority of this unit. “Every week they sit down with members of the state bodies responsible for water control, they know each other, they know who is who, they speak the same language; As in any personal relationship, you trust those you know more,” he emphasizes.
The alert system is divided into six levels: from the first to the third level, decisions are made at the provincial level; From the fourth, the intervention falls under the responsibility of the regional unit and in the fifth and sixth, the national government, through the Ministry of the Interior, begins to make the competent decisions.
In 2012, the Netherlands launched the NL Alert emergency alert system on mobile phones. Whether it was warning in the event of a fire or asking people to stay at home and close their doors and windows because a cobra snake was on the loose, the system for sending these messages worked on numerous occasions. However, we have the feeling that the emergency of 2021 was not managed well. In an investigation conducted by the veiligheidregio Of those affected by flooding, four in ten said they were not informed in time, while eight in ten said they did not know what to do if their home was flooded. Half of those surveyed consider that the emergency situation was not properly managed.
Water as a permanent threat
For the construction, reinforcement and maintenance of dikes and other water defense systems, the Dutch government has allocated a budget of 15.2 billion euros from 2016 to 2028. This is the Delta Plan, launched more than fifty years ago after the tragedy of 1953, when a strong storm on the country’s southern coast destroyed sea walls at 90 points, costing more than 1,800 lives people. . Strengthening the pipelines that protect the country is a mammoth task that does not depend solely on the government. The so-called water seals (body of water) have functioned as independent organisms for over 700 years.
They are responsible for maintaining what is called the “first defensive line”, that is to say the dams which protect the small rivers, while the management of the two large rivers, the Meuse and the Rhine , and the two lakes depend on the State. . and the whole coast. This week, the country’s oldest water service, responsible for protecting places like Schiphol Airport and on whose territory almost a million and a half people live, has just inaugurated a huge reservoir and a water zone. ‘controlled flooding with a collection capacity of up to one million people. cubic meters. It is added to another that the region already has and which could collect twice as much, up to two million cubic meters.
“24 years ago, when we thought of this project, these giant reservoirs were enough to protect us from flooding. Not anymore,” says Aad Straathof, one of the board’s commissioners. Due to climate change, episodes of extreme drought are drying up dams, less able to cope with the heavy rains that follow, while the population of this region of the country continues to increase. That’s why the taxes that fund these water boards will increase by up to 50 percent over the next four years, something Straathof hopes taxpayers will understand: “We live behind the dam, a few kilometers from the coast , people understand better than ever. the importance of our work. For his part, Jan Verkade concludes that, even if the Dutch warning system works, the statistics on which scientists rely to predict future disasters “are no longer valid. The past is no longer a good indicator for the future.
