Sewer companies in Brabant are very busy. It has been raining almost every day for weeks and they notice that at Coppelmans in Nuenen. Due to the rain and high groundwater levels, they receive many reports of flooded basements and crawl spaces. Henri Coppelmans works hard to get everyone out of the water.
These are long days for Henri, who started early at an apartment complex in Best. “I start around seven in the morning and usually continue until about eight in the evening. Many colleagues are still on holiday, so we make do with the people we have now.”
The building’s crawl space is flooded. “It has to be completely empty and that is a big job. It is a large building and I expect that we will fill 15 to 20 tankers with it. And then you have to know that one tanker can hold 14,000 liters of water.”
“It’s a big mess here.”
Cathy Ardon lives in one of the apartments. When she had to move a cupboard, Cathy was surprised to see mold on the wall. She immediately called the housing development. “It’s one big mess!”
It is a disaster for Cathy, who suffered mental and physical problems as a result. “I’m covered in rashes and in my head it’s a disaster. That’s why I’m really happy that the men are there. They’ve been at it for hours. They can have as much coffee as they want. As long as it gets resolved.”
Around noon the water is finally out of the crawl space and Henri can move on to his next customer in Geldrop. A ditch runs over it and the water flows to the house behind it. “That water went to those people’s pond like a kind of natural stream and even that has now flooded.”
“The fish are now even swimming on the terrace.”
“The fish even swim on the terrace,” says Ellen Steenbergen. She sounded the alarm when the water almost flowed into their house on Christmas Day. “It’s really not normal. We have never experienced this before. The water has nowhere to go. It’s like a swimming pool.”
Ellen’s husband tried to divert the water. “He dug a trench from the pond around the house, so that the water could drain through the front garden. But still the water continued to rise and threatened to flow in.”
In the house, the damage caused by moisture around the house is clearly visible. “We have removed the carpets and see mold everywhere. The walls are also getting completely damp.”
“You can’t leave people standing in the water.”
Even though Henri has emptied the ditch, the water level will remain high for the time being. “We keep an eye on it, because you cannot literally and figuratively leave people standing in the water. If they no longer have flooding, then I will be happy that I could do something good to help them.”
