Apparently this Samuel Eliot Morison quoted in
liha's write up wasn't there when there in
Zeeland (
the Netherlands) on the night of 31 January 1953.
"Spring tides are beloved by all who live by or from the sea"
I wouldn't say so. On that night there was a
spring tide together with a good
storm that caused major
flooding of mainly Zeeland and some parts of Zuid-
Holland and Noord-Braband
killing 1853 people. (FYI: all three are
provinces in the Netherlands.)
This
disaster has been followed by two important
government decisions:
-
Constructing the
Delta Works with 11
dams. Most famous one is the Zeeland Bridge, and still visited by many
tourists every year (but official regulations don't count that as part of the Delta Works as that was paid by another Department).
- One reason many people died was that not everybody could
swim, so a
law was accepted that
schools were obliged to provide
swimming lessons to all primary school
children in the
country in grade 3 and 4.
(This obligation has been abandoned about three years ago, because the government assumes parents earn enough to pay for it themselves (ok, just a plain budget reduction).
Despite the
regulations, the people don't jump around from
excitement when the
weather man announces spring tide (with or without storm), because there are still
survivors of the flooding alive.
Maybe in 20 or 30 years, when it's all
just in the history books and feel safe like the people in 1953 "we love the spring tide" again .... wich is mere
ignorance and
underestimation of what the forces of nature can do.