At the Noordelijk Havenhoofd in Scheveningen, a person can no longer hold his own on Friday afternoon around half past three. Glass trade Piket, on the Westduinweg, just let the heavy storm Eunice ‘get over it’, says owner Sonja van Rijs.
She measures the severity of storms by the size of the windows that need to be repaired. “Bee storm Corrie was not even code red recently.” But a window measuring 4.22 by 4.45 meters was broken in the Morgenstond district of The Hague. After Eunice, the orders can probably be a size bigger.
This year’s fourth storm is officially a “major storm”; in Vlissingen, an average wind force ten is measured in the afternoon. On the Wadden, the wind force can increase to eleven in the evening, it is predicted. The weather alarm with code red applies to all coastal provinces from Zeeland to Friesland plus Flevoland. Shortly after five an NL-Alert follows on mobile phones. “Stay inside” and “the emergency number is overloaded.”
In Amsterdam and Diemen, three people are killed by falling trees. “Don’t go out on the street anymore. It is really life-threatening,” the Amsterdam police tweeted. A motorist dies in Adorp in Groningen after a collision with a fallen tree.
Also abroad, such as Great Britain and Ireland, there are several victims due to the storm. The strongest wind gust ever recorded in the United Kingdom was recorded on the British Isle of Wight on Friday, reaching a speed of 122 miles per hour (196.3 kilometers per hour).
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Photo Robin Utrecht/ANP
A knocked-out push barge
The material damage in the Netherlands will be assessed in the coming days and must be large.
How disruptive Eunice is is already apparent from all the photos and videos that people text each other. Of a moving car in Amsterdam that is just not completely crushed under a falling tree. An unhinged barge floating lonely in the Nieuwe Maas at the Mallegat Park in Rotterdam. Six cars at the Brouwersdam on the Grevelingenmeer, of which almost none of the car windows are intact.
The municipality of The Hague and beach tent holders have taken precautionary measures on the beach in Scheveningen: a row of sand heaps must protect the beach tents and the boulevard, it will also be spring tide. Marcel Dijkstal of beach club Sol Beach does the last check in the afternoon around two o’clock. “Four hundred extra heavy screws” he has screwed into the wood. “We remain a tent, we are not made of brick.”
During a normal storm, Scheveningers remove everything that can blow away. Dijkstal: “Now we are talking about 140 kilometers per hour. If something flies through the window and the wind gets into the tent…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
The metal roof of the ADO stadium in The Hague cannot hold up and is torn open by the storm. And one of the two towers of the Elandkerk in The Hague dances dangerously back and forth in the wind. To be on the safe side, houses in the area are being evacuated and the street cordoned off. After inspection of the towers, residents are allowed to return home.
The A28 between Horst in Gelderland and Strand Nulde is temporarily closed due to flying roof parts. In Delft, an inflatable hall for indoor hockey is destroyed. In Dongen, Brabant, the roof of a block of houses flies, in Voorhout in South Holland part of the roof of an apartment complex.
Sometimes it stays with roof tiles that have blown loose, as 36-year-old Shirley Does experienced in Den Helder. “With this wind you don’t go up to the roof with a ladder”, says Does in the afternoon. A firefighter in a helmet in a cherry picker straightens her roof tiles. “Besides, I sit comfortably inside.”
Alderman Peter de Vrij (PvdA) from Den Helder has specially put together four storm teams: of district managers who normally place signs or work in the parks. Now they drive directly towards dangerous situations, but they are not very busy in the afternoon. De Vrij: “We are used to something in Den Helder, with sea on three sides.”
As Eunice roars through the sky, the land below falls silent. Flights are canceled at Schiphol, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Eindhoven Airport. Meal deliverers and flash deliverers of groceries get off their bicycles in the afternoon, parcel deliverers do not take to the road in code red areas.
The ANWB reports that “an awful lot of trucks” have overturned. On the A9 near Raasdorp, for example, a truck folds over a car like a sandwich. It is unknown if there were any injuries.
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Photo Kees van de Veen
Still stranded travelers
The NS will suspend all train traffic from 2 p.m. for the safety of passengers and employees. At the end of the afternoon – rush hour – Utrecht Central Station is almost extinct. There are about twenty stranded travelers – most of them from abroad. A service employee of the NS is somewhat surprised that despite all the announcements people are still stranded. “Then you’ve been living under a rock since Thursday,” she says.
German friends Marlena Gersitz and Bianca Hollona are sitting on plastic poufs in the station hall. They make a tour of Dutch friends. Thursday they were in The Hague, Friday they would go to Eindhoven. They wanted to take the last train at half past two in the afternoon to Brabant. But that fell out and now they are stuck in Utrecht. Marlena: “We are now looking at which is cheaper: a hotel or a taxi.”
Train traffic should be resumed as much as possible on Saturday, according to the NS. In the evenings and at night, ‘inspection trains’ run across the country without passengers, to see if the track has been blocked or damaged during the storm.
Skipped shower
The “extreme weather protocol” came into effect at home care organizations on Friday morning. Home care workers go out, even during the storm, to provide medically necessary care. Care that can be skipped, such as a shower, is postponed. Neighbors and carers are asked to help out once in a while.
“We provide medically necessary care,” says regional manager Sjoukje Veenstra of Thuiszorg Het Friese Land in Friesland. “We are not going to run any extra risk for compression stockings.” However, employees are asked not to cycle and prefer to use their own car, if it is more robust than the lease car of the Home Care Organization (Peugeot 106).
Veenstra does not feel much fear in her employees. “We are used to it here, in terms of extreme weather,” she says. “When there was a lot of snow in a short time or it was very slippery, we also provided care. There were even farm workers who drove the tractor to a client. Or we rented four-wheel drive cars. Providing care continues as usual.”
Also read this article: ‘Storms like Eunice only happen once every few years’
Wind energy record
A heavy storm like Eunice also has its positive sides: it produces a lot of wind energy. Wind farms reach the limit of what they can tolerate during a storm with this force, experts in the wind sector say.
On Thursday, when storm Dudley passed over the country, Dutch wind farms already generated a record amount of wind energy, says energy specialist Martien Visser of the website Energieopwek.nl, which monitors the production of green energy. The wind turbines then delivered a capacity of 6.84 gigawatts (GW), covering 40 percent of the Dutch electricity demand.
“Depending on the type of windmill, it will produce maximum production at wind force four to five on the ground,” says Rik Harmsen of the NWEA trade association. The fact that records are broken during storms is not because the wind blows extra hard, but because the area where it blows hard enough is larger.
But if the wind is too strong, wind turbines switch off automatically, because the rotor blades can no longer absorb the forces. For example, all 399 Belgian turbines at sea will be shut down on Friday, the association of owners of the wind farms off the Belgian North Sea coast announced. Harmsen: “It pretty much stops at wind force ten.”
Mmv Bram Endedijk, Sheila Kamerman, Titia Ketelaar, Eppo König, Hester van Santen, Merijn de Waal
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 19 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 19, 2022