Flood caused by the North Sea in 1953

The flood caused by the North Sea in 1953 is a Natural disaster which has occurred in the south-west of the Netherlands the night of the January 31st at February 1st, 1953.

The storm

In the night from January 31st to February 1st, 1953, the Onde of storm of a very violent depression of the North-West propelled water to amazing heights in the narrow narrow part to the south of the the North Sea. With Hoek van Holland, where water normally reaches 80 cm above the sea level high tide - compared to level zero of Amsterdam, NAP, Normaal Amsterdams Peil - one measured this night there a level ever reached of 385 centimetres!

The storms are frequent at sea North, and the wind generally comes from south-west. I.e. it blows parallel to the coast of the Netherlands. But this night there, the wind blew of the North-West, therefore perpendicular to the coast, which is very dangerous for the Netherlands. Moreover the storm was exceptionally long. Because of that, the water driven back by the rising Tide, in the afternoon of the Saturday, January 31, had dropped little with the following tide. So that during the rising tide at dawn of Sunday morning February 1st, water had still gone up. Moreover, the night of the catastrophe coincided with a sharp water tide.

The sharp water tides must with the agreement of lunar and solar attraction: if the the Moon and the Sun are on the same line compared to the Ground, they mutually reinforce their attraction and thus the force of the tide. This phenomenon occurs twice per month, with the full moon and the new moon. As the Moon has an elliptic trajectory around the Earth, the distance between the Earth and the Moon varies.

During the night of the catastrophe, the Moon was relatively far from the Earth. Its influence on the level of water tiny, was thus compared with that of the storm. But one quivers with the idea that two weeks later, the sharp water tide being stronger, the water level would have been even higher. Indeed, in this case, most of the province of the southernmost Holland would have could be flooded. And the catastrophe could have been worse still, if the force of the wind had not decreased when the storm reached the coast. This moment, the wind was of force 10 but little time before, off the Eastern coast of the Scotland, had been measured wind forces 12.

The consequences of this tidal wave were disastrous: more than 1.800 dead, 160.000 hectares of flooded grounds, many drowned heads of cattle, and many destroyed or damaged buildings.

Genesis of the Delta plan

The cause of the catastrophe was initially charged to an unhappy coincidence. After the storm, it appeared clearly that the human factors had also played a part. The maintenance of the dams had left something to be desired before the war, during the years of crisis. In 1939, the Minister for Transport and Management of Water had creates a " commission of the tides and tempêtes". In the years which followed, various reports/ratios drew the attention to the alarming state of the dams.

During the war the situation did not improve, and in 1943 one avoided little a catastrophic flood. After the war, the budget of the ministry for Transport was not less reduced. The rebuilding, the housing shortage and the increasing political tension between the Eastern Europe and the Western Europe required important investments.

However one studied since many years already the possibilities of increasing safety islands of south-west. Thus one had built, as of 1950, a stopping on Brielse Maas. The discussion began then on the question of knowing if it were necessary to continue to build dam of closing, or if it were to better raise and reinforce the entirety of the 700 km marine dams in the area of the Delta; but it is the catastrophe of 1953 which encouraged the public authorities to make a decision quickly and to implement the Plan Delta.

February 18th, 1953, the Minister for Transport and the Management of Water created a composite commission primarily engineers, the commission Delta . One year later, this commission published an opinion recommending to close all the arms of the sea, except for the the Western Scheldt and of the Nieuwe Waterweg, by solids stoppings. This plan was adopted in November 1957.

According to the calendar of then, the project Plan Delta was to be completed in 1978, exactly a quarter century after the catastrophe. Because of modifications and enlargings of the plan, this date was not held. The stopping anti-storm on the Western Scheldt, considered by much as the conclusion of work of the Delta plan, was finished in 1986, and the stopping anti-storm on Nieuwe Waterweg, whose construction was decided only after 1986, will be it only in 1996, that is to say 43 years after the catastrophe.

See too

List of the natural disasters in the Netherlands

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