Threatening floods along the Rhine 1995
We have already had a taste of these extremes of wet and dry conditions. In the 1990s
(and recently also in the Westland region) we had several episodes of major flooding that caused billions of euros’ worth of damage. In 1995 as many as 200,000 people had to be evacuated along the major rivers when dikes threatened to break. In summer 2003 the hot summer weather lasted so long that the land began to dry out, and the temperature of surface waters rose considerably. There was no longer any possibility of natural cooling, as the ground was too dry, a shortage of cooling water for power stations threatened to cause an energy crisis, and smaller and smaller vessels had to be used to transport cargo to and from Germany as water levels in the Rhine fell to an all-time low. This was the threat we faced from above.
