Arthur's Blog: Dutch History Offers a Solution to Prevent Future Disasters Like Those Caused by Hurricane Sandy

Last weekend, I made a trip to the Rockaways, the several-mile-long stretch of flat, sandy, coastline along the borough of Queens in New York City. It was here that, several weeks ago, a 14-foot surge of the Atlantic Ocean propelled by Hurricane Sandy caused a devastating torrent of water to demolish hundreds and hundreds of homes, to wreck a several-mile-long boardwalk, and to render uninhabitable many thousands of other residences. Although much restoration has been done, piles of debris remain, thousands of people are still without decent places to live, and numerous commercial establishments have not yet re-opened. I visited there a cousin of my wife, who had just moved back into her apartment after living like a nomad elsewhere (including in a temporary place we found for her in Manhattan) for seven weeks.

Though it was somewhat encouraging to see the massive projects of restoration that both private, state and federal agencies have undertaken in the Rockaways, it was discouraging to learn that no one has any real plans to prevent such devastation from occurring again. Apart from an intention to replace the wooden boardwalk with one made of concrete, no one is proposing that anyone spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that could erect a 15-foot-high "berm" of rock, sand and concrete along the entire length of the beach that would hold back any further surge from a future repeat of a hurricane that is bound to re-occur.

Now what has this to do with travel? The lessons of travel reveal to the traveler that other people at other times have made the public investments that prevent such tragedies.

In a book called Surprising Amsterdam that I wrote in 1965, I described the project devised in 1891 by a Dutch engineer called Cornelis Lely to wall off the ZuiderZee in Holland from the North Sea. (The ZuiderZee was a giant bay of the coastline of that nation, at the northern top of which was a 19-mile stretch of roaring ocean.) It took him 27 years to persuade the national authorities that this should be done, and work began on creating this 19-mile dike made of clay, sand and rocks, in a width that later permitted a two-lane highway to be built atop it.

The project required a huge investment by the Dutch government at that time, on a wall created directly in the sea, whose completion was always in doubt. As the two ends of the dike approached each other, the resulting torrent of water in the remaining gap became so fierce as to wash away the rocks being dumped into it  before they could form a stable barrier. Appeals went out to the entire population of The Netherlands to bring whatever boats they possessed -- even the smallest -- to carry and dump rocks into the narrowing gap. And so many thousands of people responded, converging on the dike and dumping whatever rocks their small boats could hold, that on May 28, 1932, a radio announcer could shout to an anxious nation that "The dike has been closed!"

The raging ZuiderZee had become a peaceful inland lake. A memorial was placed displaying the words, "A nation that lives, builds for the future." 

As I wrote in Surprising Amsterdam: 

On a night in February 1963, when disastrous floods swept over large portions of western Holland, the Enclosure Dike prevented the Zuider Zee from rising to engulf Amsterdam -- and perhaps Rotterdam as well. The next morning, a citizen of Amsterdam was heard to remark, "Lely's dike paid for itself in one night."

Today you can drive along the entire 19-mile length of the Enclosure Dike ("Afsluitdijk" in Dutch), as I and my wife did two years ago, and as I have done on many occasions. You witness a construction feat that slices through a raging part of the North Sea.

Remembering those outings -- and no one should ever visit The Netherlands without making the same trip -- you may feel, as I now do, to wit:

Don't tell me that we are unable to protect our shoreline from extremes of weather. Don't tell me that the United States hasn't the wherewithal to make such investments for the common good. Don't tell me that government is incapable of improving the lives and commerce of our nation. Travel teaches you an entirely different lesson. We can afford what we have to do, just as the Dutch determined in 1932.