This morning, we can see where the river has breached last night, lapping onto adjacent roads and into houses. Basements and front doors are sandbagged and some houses have put water boards at their doors, just as in Venice. Basement pumps are a pumping, and workmen are out clearing drains. Tonight's tide will be higher by 15 cm than the one last night, so we can expect things to be a little wetter yet.
Our house is in Lombardstraat, a short street running perpendicular to the Voorstraat, the main street of old Dort. It is, in fact, a dyke and our little street runs uphill significantly to meet it. We are wondering where we are in relation to sea level. I'm guessing just a little below, perhaps a metre.
Apparently the Dutch do not think too much about this - about 3 million of them live below sea level. But now and then, the reminder is overwhelming, as it was in January 1953, when much of Dordrecht flooded. Gerard was born upstairs during that flood.
The delta works are a massive engineering response to the risk the sea poses. After many drowned in 1953, this system was constructed to reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding in the Netherlands to 1 in 10000 years. Climate change was not part of the equation, unfortunately.
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