Did you know that the disaster in 1953 could have been even worse? The dikes breached at Nieuwerkerk aan de IJssel and Ouderkerk aan den IJssel, causing almost the entire area between Rotterdam, The Hague, Gouda, and Leiden to flood.
The people living here stayed safe thanks to Arie Evegroen. He closed a gap in a crucial dyke with his ship.
A close call
Here you can see how close the water came to flooding. An area with about 3 million residents was nearly submerged. The Hollandsche IJsselkering was built to prevent this from happening in the future.
The design in brief: The Hollandsche IJsselkering consists of a lock, two bridges, and two sluice gates. These sluice gates close off the river during high water. Even then, many ships can still pass through the lock.
