DUTCH FACE VAST JOB OF REBUILDING
NETHERLANDS' FLOOD PROBLEM AND PROPOSED SOLUTION
Flood Damage Is Set
Officially at More
Than $260,000,000
LgcSvvtof-dcn
O Zvtolla.
|j| Ijsselmeer 1
(ZuL/tJcr Zee),
VMST£ROAM
NORTH
LANDS BELOW SEA LEVEL MAKE
UP ONE-THIRD OF TOTAL AREA
i Arnhem
'SCHOUWEN.
o Eindhoven
^Antvterp
BELGIUM,
AREA WHERE THE FLOOD
DAMAGE WAS MOST SEVERE
Areas Below Sea Level
By DANIEL L. SCHORR
Special to The New York Times.
THE HAGUE, Feb. 14 When
the Roman, Pliny the Elder, visited
what is now the Netherlands in 50
A. D., he saw "a miserable country
where twice daily the ocean pene
trates the land in enormous width
and with unmeasurable waves
It is difficult to say what part of
the soil belongs to the land and
what part to the sea."
Today, in the flooded islands of
the southwest and on the strip
of adjoining mainland the picture
is almost as it was nineteen cen
turies ago. It is symbolic of this
nation's age-old struggle against
water.
The ancestors of the present-day
Dutch had little to start with.
Their land was a dump of sand and
mud left over from the Ice Age,
shaped by millenniums of wind
and tide that created a fringe of
sand dunes backed by huge swamps
and crisscrossed by great rivers.
This somber land of fog, sand
banks and floods was shunned by
most early seafarers. It was where
Homer supposed hell to be.
The Beginnings
But peoples like the Frisians
managed to live here, protecting
themselves by building their huts
on "terps," or artificial mounds.
The introduction of agriculture
made it necessary to protect more
than just their home and cattle;
and somewhere around the elev
enth century the people hit on the
idea of building dikes.
The early dikes were purely de
fensive, aimed at saving what land
remained against the constant
floods. One flood around the thir
teenth century created the Zuyder
Zee. Another, the Saint Elizabeth
Flood in 1421, killed an estimated
10,000 of the total population of
300,000.
These walls of dikes were so
vital that no feuds were allowed
When they needed repair. Viola
tion of the "dike peace" brought
quick exssution.
Anyone found breaching a dike
was buried alive in the hole ha had
made. A sense of common danger
bred the communal feeling that
characterizes the Dutch today.
About the sixteenth century, the
Dutch took the offensive. Starting
by reclamation of the lakes that
mottled their land, they proceeded
to dike in areas of the sea.
So far, the Dutch have won
345,000 acres of lake lands, 940,000
acres along the seashore and 168,-
000 acres from the Zuyder Zee,
which was dammed up to make
Ijssel Lake a total of 1,453,000
acres. The people have come out
about even, for they have lost
1,400,000 to the sea in the past
seven centuries.
Today, more than a third of the
country lies below sea level and
almost half below flood level. In
these low-lying areas live more
than half of the Netherlands' 10,-
500,000 people.
Lines of Defense
For their security, they depend
on 1,800 miles of dikesseawalls
and "sleeping" and "dreaming"
dikes that once protected individ
ual polders, or strips of farmland,
and that now usually amble
through dry land as second and
third lines of defense.
The constant menace of water
has left a powerful mark on this
nation. It has resulted in the cre
ation of semi-autonomous water
schappen, or Watership Boards, in
each dike-enclosed area to super
vise the defenses and see to the
proper functioning of canals,
sluices, windmills and the pumps
without which vast areas behind
the dikes would be endangered by
water seeping up from underneath.
Under such conditions, the wa
ter is everybody's business. When
a few flood-stricken farmers tried
last week in their desperation to
release water by breaching dikes
adjoining their polders, the Gov
ernment issued a stern warning
reinforced by strong popular sanc
tionsagainst such anti-social
acts. The practice promptly halted.
Today, again, all l^ctherlanders
except the insignificant Commu-
nist minorityare united in a
"dike peace" that has blotted out
partisan conflicts.
The gale-swept flood of Feb. 1,
which scientists identified as a tidal
wave, struck an area of 360,000
acres, or 11 per cent of the coun
try, with a population of 600,000.
Actually ravaged by water were
330,000 acres or 5.7 per cent of the
country's cultivated land. The
known death toll is 1,400a figure
that may rise to more than 2,000.
Premier Willem Drees estimated
the damage at $263,000,000. The
affected area is almost exclusively
agricultural and, aside from the
immediate damage, She most seri
ous consequence is to deprive the
'THE EMPTY SHOE'
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat
country of about $85,000,000 worth,
annually, of farm production,
principally potatoes, onions, sugar
beets and flax.
How long the Netherlands will
lose this output depends on the
time needed to close the dikes,
drain off the water and get the
deadly salt out of the soil.
August G. Maris, director gen
eral of waterways, told this writer
that small crops could be expected
soon, but it would probably be 1955
before there was another full
harvest.
Offensive Action
Until now, the stop-gap battle
has been fought with sandbags to
close the smaller dike breaches
and shore up the weakened de
fenses. Now, the Government is
planning the great offensive to
close the dikes riddled with
thirty-seven big breaches up to 200
yards in width and more than 100
smaller ones and then to see
what can be done to avoid such
disaster in the future.
The dike repair is likely to de
velop into a dramatic battle, like
that after World War II, when the
nation waited breathlessly as thou
sands toiled to close the seawalls
of Walcheren, broken by British
bombs in 1944 to drive out the
Germans menacing the Allied port
of Antwerp.
Ships ana concrete caissons were
then sunk in the gaps by men who
could work effectively only a few
minutes daily when the tide was
turning and who sometimes saw
the toil of weeks swept away by
swift currents.
In most places It is first neces
sary to lay rock-weighted brush
wood mattress because the sand
bottom will otherwise not hold the
tremendous weight placed on it.
Then comes the sinking of the
caissons or ships, followed by the
pouring in of sand and clay topped
by soil or asphalt.
Study Is Planned
Once the defenses are restored,
the nature of future improvements
will depend on an exhaustive study
to be made by a commission of
experts, including Prof. Jan T.
Thysse, head of the Delft Hydrau
lic Laboratory, who has been called
home from his guest lectureship
at the University of Michigan to
help. In the laboratory, scale
models will simulate the dike sys
tem and wind and tidal influences
long tests will be made.
Maybe it will be found necessary
to build the dikes higher, but this
brings the danger of higher floods,
since, once a breach is made, the
level of the dike determines the
level of inundation. Maybe it will
be decided to change the profile of
the dikes, since it has been found
that later dikes with more gradual
incline toward the water have
stood up best.
It will probably be necessary to
strengthen the backs of the dikes,
since many of them were under
mined from behind last week by
water that had surged over the
top.
A far - reaching plan is being
studied to erect huge damsone
connecting the outer limits of Wal
cheren, Schouwen and Goeree and
another linking the West Frisian
Islandsthat would cut off all
Dutch North Sea outlets except
the Western Scheldt and Rotter
dam's waterway.
Support Is Evident
The projdet had already been the
subject of some study before the
Feb. 1 flood, as a way of combat
ing the infiltration of salt into the
low-lying soil, but it had never
won the Government's approval.
However, this month's disaster
quickened the national interest,
and Parliament in debate dis
played a surprising measure of
support, despite governmental
warnings about technical and eco
nomic difficulties.
Aside from engineering prob
lems and the cost of building a
dam on sand bottom, in some
places more than 200 yards deep,
the Government has worried about
the ruin of fishing harbors and the
famous Zeeland oyster beds in the
reduction of coastline from 820
miles to 270 miles. Yet in the
present frame of mind of the av
erage Netherlander, the project is
preferable to risking another such
flood.
There will be thorough investi
gation before such a project is
approved. Meanwhile, the Govern'
ment, reaching back twelve cen
turies, is planning to build "terps"
to which the island inhabitants can
flee in time of danger.
O MILES 50
