This poor blog is being neglected because we don't find our Dutch life very interesting, but now something happened. Thursday evening, just when Maud finished cooking a really nice dinner (as opposed to throwing something together that is filling, healthy and most of all not time-consuming), Marijke (Maud's mum) phoned. They (Dick & Marijke) had been hit by a tornado. A tornado, in Vierhouten, the Netherlands?!
Of course we had to go there immediately, but travelling by train to a village nearby and bike through the woods to Vierhouten, like we normally do, didn't seem a sensible option, so Bram's uncle Haroen gave us his car to try reach the disaster area.
Driving there we almost cannot believe anything has happened, seeing blue skies with a few white clouds. Turning of the highway we subsequently encounter a drizzle, rain, heavy rain. A police roadblock closes the turn-of to the village, but Maud manages to talk her way through. After a couple of k's we run into a fire-brigade-roadblock. By than we know the road to the village is blocked by fallen trees, but Maud's mom lives outside in the woods, and we want to get as close as we can through the forest and than walk. Again Maud manages to get permission to pass and go on, into the forest, promising we'll drive slowly and leave the car well off the road so the rescue-people can get through.
In the end we manage to get quite close; we can drive on to the beginning of the plot. There we run into a couple of big fire-brigade-vehicles. In front of them the road is totally blocked by fallen trees. We get out of the car, and start to walk. After explaining we have to check on the elderly people living somewhere behind the mountain of fall-out, we get permission to climb over and crawl under the tree-trunks and try to reach them. Leaving the house a bit hasty, Bram jumped into his white Colombian tailor-made pants, and Maud is wearing a t-shirt and slippers. The flip-flops have to go after a couple of meters because they get stuck in mud and rubbish. The many firemen we encounter look surprised at this strange couple, but let us pass, so it must have been obvious we're on an urgent mission.
Than we hear someone shouting in the dark, it's Marijke's voice, telling us to walk towards the signals of her flashlight. She's right in the middle of the tree-roadblock. Left and right we see vague lights - fire-brigade-people trying to cut through from the two sides of the roadblock. The entrance to the yard is gone, disappeared under tree-trunks. We get over the fence, and climb and crawl to the house.
By miracle the house still stands, and Marijke & Dick are not hurt, neither are the dogs, but apart from that it's disaster all around. We spent the rest of the evening trying to see if any damaged but still standing trees threaten the house, looking for a safe place to sleep, and checking the progress of the firemen. They also check on us, and help us look for danger.
In the morning we finally can see how disastrous the tornado has been. The house is still standing, and some of the garden-projects survived - the stuff that can be rebuild in a day, a week, a couple of month's. But the century-old trees are wiped out. What used to be a beautiful wood is reduced to some spidery pines.
Armed with a chainsaw to cut our way through Bram and Maud set out to check the whole plot. We meet policemen with dogs looking for victims. After a couple of hours we cleared a path. Meanwhile we get visits from more policemen, asking if we have missing people to report, from fire-brigade-men, checking out dangerous situations, and even the major and the head of police climb en crawl to the house. That last visit proves to be very worthwhile. Normally the Dutch fire brigade only clears public spaces like roads. But seeing the disaster, and the trees threatening to topple over, the major allows the brigade to clear the plot of anything risky. Two groups of firemen, most of them well-trained volunteers from two nearby villages, and some municipality-workers arrive. They sweat for hours to clear the plot from danger. They're really, truly amazing, and incredibly nice; we're very grateful guys! The car for instance was invisible before the arrived...
