5/18/25

Today, we didn’t have any event scheduled until the 1 pm, so I took the opportunity to sleep in a little later. After waking, I headed over to the Albert Heijn which is a supermarket not unlike a Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh. Here, I got a bacon-ei sandwich (meaning bacon and egg sandwich).

After lunch, we boarded the bus to get to Ouwerkerk , a coastal village in the Netherlands. Within this village, there is the Watersnoodmuseum which exists as a center for knowledge and remembrance of the Floods of 1953. In total, 1836 passed away due to these floods [1], so it is an important event to mourn and remember.

After the storm, it was extremely hard to communicate as the majority of ships coming to help did not have radio communications, so a communications network from Irk helped rescuers communicate with each other. In fact, amateur radio operators would listen out on the radios and then communicate it back to their own governments to request aid [2].

The museum also holds newspaper clippings from this time, showing the absolute destruction that these floods had on society. A photo of these clippings is included below.

During this experience, a man asked me and Victoria to enter a room and asked if we knew how to embroider. He briefly explained the process of embroidering to us; then, we had the opportunity to make a couple of stitches. After completing this side quest, we learned about the reason we were embroidering; someone embroidered the name of all the victims after the floods. In fact, it took him five years to finish this project. A picture of our embroidering and some of the embroidered names are included below, in that order:

Another section also contained drawings / paintings that capture the feelings and emotions of victims of the floods. This section was extremely powerful as it literally paints a picture of the physical and mental distress suffered by these flood victims.

Overall, this museum serves as a reminder of the danger of flooding and the importance of conserving our ecosystems and carbon use. If too much climate change occurs, risk of flooding increases, and many more people could be endangered by the flooding.

[1] Zeeuws Archief, “The North Sea Flood: facts, numbers and links,” https://www.zeeuwsarchief.nl/en/zeeland-stories/de-ramp-feiten-cijfers-en-links/ (accessed May 19, 2025).

[2] Watersnoodmuseum, Ouwerkerk, Netherlands, “Exhibitions,”