Ruisbroek

On January 3, 1976, there was the flooding disaster of Ruisbroek. A severe northwester storm coincided with spring tide in the North Sea. Unlike in 1953, the - now heavily reinforced - Zeeland and Waas dikes held, but the tidal wave was pushed inland up the Scheldt, where dikes broke at Moerzeke, Walem, and Ruisbroek. In Ruisbroek, the low dikes of the Vliet, a small side arm of the Rupel, gave way, causing more than eight hundred houses to be submerged. Just upstream, in Battenbroek, 9-year-old Wim De Smedt drowned while trying to find safety on the bank of the newly constructed E19 with some neighbors.

The January storm of 1976 was not a local disaster: in northern Germany, people are today remembering the damage and victims of the ‘Capella hurricane’, named after an East German cargo ship that sank in the storm off the coast of Terschelling. In Hamburg, the water level of January 3, 1976, remains the highest ever recorded.

In the Belgian collective memory, ‘Ruisbroek 1976’ is to Belgium what the 1953 flood disaster is to the Netherlands: a catalyst for a radical revision of coastal defense. The grief and anger of the victims were directed at the Tindemans government, which was accused of delaying dike reinforcements. It didn't help that the Minister of Public Works, the Francophone liberal Jean Defraigne, had stated in the press that investments should not come at the expense of urgently needed Walloon highways.

Mediahuis België