17
FEAR STILL HAUNTS MOTHER AND SON RESCUED AFTER TWO PERILOUS DAYS FROM DUTCH TOWN WHERE 57 DROWNED AND HUNDREDS WERE MAROONED
NORTH SEA TERRORIZES ITS PEOPLE
Thames estuary engulfing low-lying ground
right into the outskirts of London. The storm
flicked at France, inundated a corner of Bel
gium, smashed its hardest blows at Holland.
There the dikes gave way and the sea crested,
in some places 12 feet deep, over fields and
towns and into Rotterdam on land the Dutch
had spent 700 years reclaiming from the sea.
The rescuers mobilized quickly, but the sea
was not finished. Day after day, snow and
sleet and gale battered the stricken areas, ham
pering the rescue efforts of planes, trucks,
helicopters and men with rowboats. Hundreds
who survived the first onslaught succumbed
to exposure and slipped down to death from
their precarious perches of safety.
As the week ended, the known dead were
1,550. The storm had left its mark on the faces
of people and the face of the land. Nearly a
million victims had been evacuated and dam
age was incalculable. In a disaster almost too
big to be measured, the victims could only call
it the worst since 1421 when St. Elizabeth's
flood drowned 100,000 in Holland in 24 hours.
Last week, for hundreds of miles along the
coasts of England and the Low Countries,
women and children, and men too, cringed
from an ancient, mindless enemy. The North
Sea had burst its bonds and was upon the land.
Riding behind the snow, rain and 100 mph
winds, the sea struck at night too hard and
fast to flee. Getting up, Britons opened their
doors, only to be knocked down by flood. Hol
landers heard their first warning in the mourn
ful midnight tolling of church bells, when it
was already too late. The flood bored up the
id.1 'ipi i i
