them he notices that some of the lines have gone dead.
The water has got there first!
At 4.15 a.m. he telephones the Netherlands Press Agency in
The Hague. The flood is news to them. The message is
verified and at 4.22 a.m. the teleprinters begin to rattle:
ALARM!
But our telephonist does even more: he rings the Ministry
of the Interior and here too, he is the first. In the meantime
the water has reached his office and has risen to the
IV2 yard mark. It is still rising rapidly, suddenly the line
goes dead and the connection with the Ministry is broken
The young man can just, hut only just, save himself by
swimming over the counter and through the door. The
first means of communication with the world outside has
gone!
More reports come in, at an ever increasing pace:
4.28 a.m. Willemstad flooded.
4.46 a.m. Emergency at Zwijndrecht.
5.03 a.m. Emergency at Maassluis, Cadzand, Melissant,
Kruiningen, Perkpolder, flansweert, Ierseke and
Dordrecht
5.44 a.m. The messages from Dordrecht and Rotterdam
give more details.
Emergency in the isle of Texel.
6.11 a.m. Emergency in Zuid-Beierland,
etc. etc. etc.
The pile of messages is getting higher and higher. The
editors of the daily papers have been awakened via a special
alarm system at the same time that the first telex message
went out. Officials are informed, correspondents, reporters
and press photographers swarm out to all points of the
compass. The floods which seemed to be local at first, assume
the proportions of a national disaster of unprecedented
extent. An extent which could not even be measured after a
couple of weeks had passed.
