All Saints' Flood (1570)

Drawing by Hans Moser in 1570 of Scheldt flood

The All Saints' Flood (Allerheiligenvloed) of 1570 was a disaster which happened on November 1, on the Dutch coast. Affected cities include Egmond, Bergen op Zoom and Saeftinghe.

On 1 November 1570, the Domeinraad council in Bergen op Zoom had warned the dijkgraafs of the south and north quarters of a "very excessive high flood" "considering those big storms of wind starting yesterday".

A long period of storm pushed the water to unprecedented heights, even higher than those at the flood disaster of 1953. It broke innumerable dikes on the Dutch coasts, as a result of which there were enormous floods and immense damage. The total number of dead is thought to have been in the tens of thousands,[1] but exact data is not available. Tens of thousands of people became homeless. Livestock was lost in huge numbers. Winter stocks of food and fodder were destroyed. The Allerheiligenvloed marks the origin of the Verdronken Land van Saeftinghe (verdronken = "drowned"). In Zeeland the small islands Wulpen, Koezand, Cadzand and Stuivezand were permanently lost.

It was confirmed that the floods drowned 20,000 people to death.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jurjen A. Battjes and Herman Gerritsen (15 July 2002). "Coastal modeling for flood defence". Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. JSTOR 3066452.
  2. ↑ KNMI website

Sources

Part of the text on this page originated from the Internet site of the KNMI (page in Dutch).

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