If you didn’t know, you would think that Annelies Goorden and her husband are doing a lot of renovation in their house on Donkerepad in Veldhoven. The residents know better. They have not spent the night there since June 20 this year due to flooding. It is even questionable whether that will ever be possible given the location and condition of their monumental home. “Every day I come here I say a little goodbye.”
On June 18, all hell broke loose for the Goorden couple. In no time, their house, which was built in 1880, was completely flooded. Annelies doesn’t like to think back about it: “It was a huge shower. Within half an hour the water was up to my knees.”
“It’s sad to see how everything has been like this for months.”
The tracks can still be seen almost seven months later. Annelies: “It is so sad to see how everything is going. The floors have been taken out, a large part of the grout has been removed from the walls and you can see cracks everywhere.”
Doors hang haphazardly against window frames and power lines lie open and exposed in the walls. And then that garden, it had almost been redesigned. What do you mean about the rain in the drop? Annelies can’t laugh about it, tears well up in her eyes when she tells her story.
She and her husband were forced to leave the house behind because it had become too humid. Annelies finds it difficult to let go of the house: her mother was born there, it is her parental home and she has lived there for years.
The Veldhoven native does not want to blame anyone. According to her, the insurance company and the municipality are doing everything they can. A spokesperson for the municipality explains: “The situation of the Goorden family is extremely serious. As a municipality we help them where possible. Research has shown that the sewer has been constructed and is functioning as designed. There is therefore no reason to assume that there is a relationship between the functioning of the sewer and the nuisance.”
“We are developing measures to further reduce the risk of nuisance.”
There is another problem. “Their home is at the lowest point in the area. We are now developing measures to further reduce the risk of nuisance. For example, we are examining whether the sewage pumping station in the Donkerepad can work even better in emergency situations. We are also investigating whether the edges of the wadi can be raised.”
The wadi is a lower piece of land that has been constructed to collect water. That Tuesday in June, the water storage was so full that it overflowed. And because the Goordens’ house is in the lowest spot in the area, rainwater flowed straight into her house via the street.
So we have to wait for a solution for Annelies. But also look forward to the results of a structural investigation into, among other things, the foundation of the house. Time is running out, because the investigation will take months and in March the couple will have to leave the house that was offered to them for free. Annelies doesn’t want to think about it, but she bears in mind that returning may take a very long time. “But is that still possible? I hope so, but I really don’t know.”
YOU MAY ALSO FIND THIS INTERESTING:
Annelies’ house completely underwater due to rain: ‘Everything is upside down’