  
| 
| ||||||||||||||
Holland copes with threat of floodBy CNN's Richard Quest  The 1953 floods killed 1,800 people in Holland. SPECIAL REPORT
• Rebuilding: Vital signs
• Gallery: Landmarks over time
• Storm & Flood: Making history
• I-Report: Share your photos
ROTTERDAM, Holland (CNN) -- Flat, surrounded by water, and like New Orleans, largely below sea level, Holland lives with the threat of flooding from the North Sea. Holland's equivalent of Katrina happened in 1953 -- a storm surge at high tide destroyed the dykes, killing 1,800 people. Huib de Vriend was one of the children rescued, and now is an expert in flood prevention. "After the 1953 floods we said 'never again,' but that's an absolute statement of course, so we had to translate that into an acceptable level of safety," he said. In Holland that meant raising the flood probability to one in 10,000 years -- by comparison the New Orleans standard was one in 250 years. For the Dutch, this new, higher standard, involved large spending for instance on huge new dams across the river estuaries. Being prepared meant having control rooms waiting just in case. The latest project is a flood barrier system, with swinging gates towering 70 feet into the air. This structure is absolutely vast, but then it has to be, because the idea is that the two sides come together in the middle of the river and sink to the bottom. Only then will they be able to protect Rotterdam from the storm surge. Professor de Vriend believes the American authorities have to go back to the beginning. "Decide politically what sort of level of flood safety you would like to have then derive the design conditions to that level of safety and design a flood protection system to meet those conditions," he said. The U.S. Gulf Coast threat is very different from that faced by North Sea, so what has worked in Holland may not be suitable for New Orleans. But as one resident told me: "Each Dutchman believes that it's important to spend money on flood control and I don't think they spent that much money in New Orleans lately." Everyone agrees though, the principles remain the same. 
|
| ||||||||||||||
| © 2007 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
 |
|
External sites open in new window; not endorsed by CNN.com
Pay service with live and archived video. 
