‘The roof was pulled off the house like Velcro’

Hidde and Tess Schröder from Edam lay in bed on Friday afternoon to rest before driving to Switzerland with their three children. During a previous storm, Schröder had once said that the creaking overhead sounded like the roof of the house might blow. Around half past three Friday afternoon, during gusts that caused damage in the entire region above Amsterdam, this turned out to be a correct estimate. “We heard it tearing. The roof was pulled off the house like Velcro,” says Hidde Saturday morning at the front door of their stately home on an Edam canal.

The torn roof is located a little further away in the garden of neighbor John Lagerburg. “I was in the shed and heard a bang. I thought it was my solar panels, but it was the neighbor’s roof that had blown down over my dormer window,” says Lagerburg from a ladder. He is putting the roof tiles back on his dormer window himself. All roofers are already occupied.

Fifteen phone calls

Also Nick Brandsema from Monnickendam. He has already had at least fifteen phone calls on Saturday morning. “Especially roof tiles. If there is tarpaulin under it, that is not such a disaster, because then it will remain dry. That’s why I went here first,” he says in front of Tess Schröder and Hidde’s house. It will rain in the afternoon. Then the ceiling under the torn roof will suffer water damage if it is not covered.

Also on the street people approach roofer Brandsema with the question whether he wants to repair their damage. There are no tiles on many Edam roofs. A tree in the water lies across the Edam Achterhaven. On the other side of the historic town – in village size – a tree has fallen on the house of Ilse de Boer and her husband. They saw it happening from their living room on Friday afternoon. “He came to us. But luckily it went very slowly. Only some roof tiles are broken and there is damage to the woodwork,” says De Boer, trying to get over the noise of a chainsaw. In her front yard, an acquaintance is cutting the tree into pieces.

De Boer looks cheerful. Fortunately, it is only material damage. We are insured for that. You can also get a roof tile on your head. That is much worse.”