It was unusually windy on the Dutch coast. It’s January 1953. The previous night, a low pressure system over the North Sea caused hurricane force winds in Scotland leaving behind a trail of destruction.
That storm was now heading to the Netherlands. The government issued a warning advising people to stay in and a day started bad. In the morning.
A ferry in the UK sailed into rough weather. waves reached up to nine meters or 30 feet and the captain decided it was better to turn back. The that proved to be a deadly mistake.
The ship rolled over and 133 people died. Meanwhile, on the Dutch coast, people were bracing for impact. The storm was pushing water over the full length of the North Sea against the Dutch coastal defenses.
They heavily enforced this coastline. That's because all this land lies below sea level and only remains dry as long as these dikes and dunes can withstand to see a 10 p. m.
. The storm was at its strongest. But to make things worse, it hit exactly during a spring tide.
Then all across England, Belgium and the Netherlands, the dikes broke. This freezing water flooded entire villages and islands with a relentless force. In less than 30 minutes, some villages were covered under three meter or ten feet of freezing salt water.
But the true size of the devastation became clear in the morning. Tens of thousands of animals had drowned and thousands of houses were washed away. The flood killed hundreds of people in the first night, but many more were still trapped in their houses.
It was incredible challenging for emergency services to reach the area and many houses succumbed to the strong currents. More than 1800 people lost their lives, more than half of which on the day after. This disaster had a profound impact on Dutch culture and the economy.
But not in ways that you might think. That year, the economy grew by 8. 4%.
This was exceptionally high and was partly due to the storm. The Dutch wasted no time. They engineered a series of dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees and storm surge barriers that are now not only considered one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
They also caused a rapid development of the affected province. This is how the Dutch turned around a disaster. .
. with Hindsight. Before World War II several studies had concluded that the dikes in this part of the Netherlands were too low.
There already exists several plans for securing the coastline. But it was an idea from Johan van Veen that caught attention. In 1942, he proposed to drastically transform the Delta region.
He wanted to build dams and reclaim much of this land. The idea was to restore the region to its geography in the year 800. But the Netherlands was still under German occupation, and after the war, there were more concerned with rebuilding their country.
It was known that the Delta region needed work. But it wasn't until the North Sea flood that it became a priority. The streams of refugees leave the stricken towns and villages more than 50,000 have already been evacuated to safe areas In the immediate aftermath of the flood Dutch radio broadcasters collected money with the credo Wallets open.
Dikes closed. More than 100,000 people had lost their house and 9% of Dutch farmland was now flooded with salt water. It became a top priority for the people and the politicians to prevent this from ever happening again.
The main challenge was that this coastline, with all its islands and channels was over 700 kilometers or 430 miles long. That's a lot of coast to defend. In good Dutch tradition, a commission was appointed to advise the government.
And yes, they're all aging white men. But this man here you might recognize as Johan Van Veen, was now appointed the commission's secretary only three months after he started the work. They presented this report.
Their first findings were about this island. All these black rectangles here represented large holes in the dikes that were still not closed. This island is particularly vulnerable to storms due to its position.
And their first recommendation was to raise the dikes by five meters or 16 feet above sea level. The second recommendation came shortly thereafter. It concerned this river.
When the seawater is high, it can enter the river and flood an area that is inhabited by 1. 5 million people. But wait until you see their plan.
That only did they make a compelling case. They had already worked out detailed drawings of how these flood barriers should be built. This entire proposal was made in just three months.
You got to appreciate their efficiency. I'll come back to this later. But much of this plan was exactly executed as they proposed, and it's now considered to be amongst the most impressive technical feats in human history.
But that's not all. Their next advice was to build dams. This is where the big stuff would happen.
They recommended these locations, which in later maps would look a little bit more detailed and much cooler. The goal of these dams was to shorten the coastline. It would be reduced from 700 kilometers or 440 miles to only 80 kilometers or 49 miles.
This would drastically reduce the cost of maintenance and it would reduce the risk of flooding. One year after the flood, construction had already started on the flood barrier on this river and much larger plans were still under active consideration. The commission published the now famous three islands plan on this German map from 1945.
You can see more accurately how the province looked back then down here. There are three islands North and South Beveland and Walcheren. This last island at the end of World War Two came under attack from the British.
They bombed the dikes and flooded almost the entire island. 600 out of 650 houses were destroyed and this salt water rendered the agricultural land useless for many years. This is a significant weakness for the Netherlands in times of war.
The three island plan proposed by the Delta Commission would connect Walcheren to South Beveland. It would shorten this 50 kilometer or 30 mile coastline to only two and a half kilometers or one and a half mile. The commission recommended to start working on this as soon as possible.
It was a relatively easy project and it would help with gaining experience for the much larger projects that lay ahead. Their final report was released in 1955. It was approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate and was formally signed into action by Queen Juliana.
Construction could begin. The initial estimate was that the Delta Works would cost one and a half to 2 billion Dutch guilders. If adjusted for inflation, there would be 8,5-11 billion U.
S. dollar. They first started working on the storm surge barrier in the Hollandsche IJssel.
It consists of two sluices, each with a massive barrier that weighs over 600,000 kilograms or 670 tons. These massive structures can be raised up to 45 meters above sea level, which allows ships to pass this massive construction. It's one of the smallest the Delta works.
Upon its delivery in 1958, they started building the Grevelingen Dam. and they simultaneously started to work on the three island plan. This was almost exactly executed as proposed by the Delta Commission.
The two dams were built joining the two islands. An additional benefits was that these dams improved the accessibility of the islands as they both have a highway on top. These projects provided the Dutch with some necessary experience with the construction of the Grevelingen Dam they used a cable car to move concrete blocks.
This was the first time that this technique was used and it proved to be a huge success. But the dam also had an unfortunate side effect. This entire region was still connected to the North Sea and a newly built dam made the tidal differences here even more extreme.
The Dutch decided to first reinforce this coastline, but they knew it would potentially not be enough if another strong storm would occur. It was now a race against the clock to build a dam to close this inlet entirely. But this was no easy task.
It has to span 6 km or 3. 7 miles. And the water was 30 meters or 100 feet deep at its deepest point.
While construction was in progress, there were several storms that pushed the water level dangerously close to those in 1953. But the dikes, fortunately enough, withstood the might of the sea. Meanwhile, the also embarked on the challenge to close off the Haringvliet, which was pestered with a completely different set of challenges.
This is the estuary of the Rhine in the Meuse River. It can be closed off entirely because this water needs to have somewhere to go. Engineers spent one and a half years on carefully planning the construction of scale models.
They made exact calculations and tested their ideas all the while. While parts of the dams were already being built to save time, the Haringvliet Dam was a massive undertaking. They drove 20,000 piles to the seabed, some as wide as 24 meters or 80 feet.
They then hung huge sluice doors in between, and they constructed a four lane highway on top. The dam has a length of five kilometers or 3. 1 miles, and the width of one kilometer or 0.
6 miles. It has advanced sluices that control the flow of the water and which allows passage for ships. This dam was charged with controlling the flow of freshwater into the ocean.
And they built another dam further inland. This exact location was chosen because it would help improve the highway connection to the south. Another reason for this dam was to better control the flow from the river Rhine.
This river passes through several industrial areas, such as the Ruhrgebiet And this made it relatively polluted. The Volkerak Dam would help control the flow of this polluted water into the ocean as well as drift ice during the winter. In the early 1970s, the construction of these dams were concluded and the largest project of the Delta works had only just begun.
The Oosterschelde Barrier started construction in 1967 and the original plan was to physically close this entire inlet through reclaimed land and closed dams. It had a width of nine kilometers or five and a half miles, and more than half of this was already closed using artificial islands. But in the early 1970s, more critical voices started to emerge.
A closed barrier would halt tidal changes, and this would turn the water fresh. Many locals lived off farming mussels and oysters, and these environmental changes would cost them their business. There were also fishermen who crossed this passage daily to fish out at sea and who were against closing this passage.
And later, there were critical voices from environmentalists who feared that this barrier would cause irreversible damage to the marine ecosystem. These groups of protesters joined forces in a highly organized manner and caused public outcry against the closed barrier. Construction was paused, and as we can expect from the Dutch, they appointed a commission to advise on some sort of middle ground.
And it kind of blew my mind what they came up with. They changed the design of this barrier. It will be upgraded in a way that it could control the tidal changes in this water artificially.
To make this work, they built three more dams. This made the surface area smaller, which had the benefit that they needed less water to create a high tide. But it also created this shipping route from the Rhine to the harbor of Antwerp.
This route was entirely free from tidal differences. Which is better for shipping. And it also created freshwater reservoirs, which could be used by local farmers.
Didn’t I tell you it's kind of a genius middle ground? The Oosterschelde Barrier was the largest construction of not only the Delta works, but in the history of Dutch water management. It consists of 65 pillars that each weigh 1.
8 million kilograms or nearly 2000 tons. After a quarter century of construction in 1986, it was opened by Queen Beatrix with the now famous words. The storm surge barrier has been closed, the Delta works completed and sea level is safe.
The sluices are usually open, allowing seawater to enter only if the water level is raised by a storm to three meters above sea level will the sluices automatically close. This has happened 27 times since its opening. Like with the other dams, dikes and levees.
There's a highway on top. This improved connectivity is one of the most important benefits that the Delta Works brought to the province. Closely followed by an important tradition When the wind speed exceeds seven on the Beaufort scale, this highway becomes the stage of the Dutch Headwind Cycling Championships.
The contestants are provided bikes and need to get to the other side of the barrier as quickly as they can with headwind. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to participate. Smaller sluices and barriers were built in the 1980s and 90s.
It might seem pale in comparison, but that Maeslant Barrier is a true marvel of engineering. At the time of construction, the harbor of Rotterdam was the busiest in the world, and this barrier improves its safety. Each door is 200 meters or 650 feet wide, which make it the largest moving parts of any barrier in the entire world.
Five decades of engineering ingenuity has been concluded. This was the most complex water management project in history, and it's firmly positioned to ingenuity of Dutch engineers on the international market. But it also had adverse environmental effects that we need to talk about.
The polluted water from the rain enters the business, which is a fragile natural ecosystem in a previously healthy Grevelingen it took only three weeks for almost all living organisms to die. Much of this has been reversed, but there are still dead cells in this water. The Delta Works have had a profound negative impact on the environment, but some of this has been reversed.
It is closely monitored and to some extent it has been mitigated. Many of the Delta Works were intended to serve until the year 2100s with some constructions needing replacement before done. But recent projections concluded that with the accelerator, the pace of sea level rise The Oosterschelde Barrier would likely already need to be replaced by 2080.
The Netherlands will continue to battle against the might of the sea, but what the Delta workers show us is that no matter the adversity, you can count on the Dutch to somehow turn it around masterfully. If you haven’t seen my other video on the Zuider Sea Works, cick on the video here on the left. Or else click on the video on the right if you're up for something new.
