Netherlands: Problem
This image could have been taken in Katrina's wake, but it was actually
captured more than a decade ago and an ocean away from Louisiana. Periodic
flooding has plagued the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. Half the country,
including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, lies below sea level in a drainage basin for
three rivers and at the door of the North Sea. A catastrophic flood in 1953
killed nearly 2,000 people and destroyed whole villages; afterward, the Dutch
vowed never again.
