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Flood History

We All Learn From Our Mistakes....
     For as long as there have been people living in Holland, there have been floods. Unlike most nations, the Dutch have accepted floods as a regular occurrence and have prepared appropriately in anticipation of the next "big" one. Many of the current measures and technologies present in Holland to battle floods were inspired in great part by the catastrophic flood of 1953.

     It was in this year that a violent storm surge produced by the turbulent currents of the North Sea battered the coasts of Holland, killing an estimated 1800 people. This event led to the implementation of the Delta Plan in 1958 which outlined two ambitious goals to prevent such gross loss of life in the future. First, outlets located in the southwest region of the country were to be completely sealed off from the sea and secondly, the coast was to be shrunk from 3400 km to approximately 700 km through construction of a massive concrete barrier not finished until 1986 (2).