6. The plain, the floods
Pass by the Sluis Bosscherveld and continue forward by walking along the river. Follow the path in the grass and enjoy this green plain by the river. In July 2021, huge rainfall led rivers in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands to grow out of their beds, where great swathes of land and residential areas were flooded by the Maas and Geul rivers. The plain you are walking on right now, for instance. The floods were a strong reminder of the river’s potentially dangerous presence. Maastricht was out of sorts, the city nigh unreachable due to the upturned infrastructure and public transportation services. Neighbourhoods like Heugem and Randwyck had to be wholly evacuated. This left a strong impression on the residents.
“The sound, you never forget the sound. The sound, the speed, and the size of the water is impressive, you are helpless against something this powerful. Such power, such energy. Yet I noticed that the scary thing for people is not the speed of the water. What is scary is the rising. And the rising was very slow, so very slow. Very quiet.”
– Peters
“I remember when it happened, I was kind of laughing, like, it's so high, it looks like it's going to flood at any point. I didn't believe it would actually happen. Eventually, we got an alert on our phones saying we must evacuate right now. So, we had to pack all our things. We have three dogs and a cat, so we had to pack them too. And we left. Nothing flooded in our suburb, so we were fine in the end, but it was really stressful. Just a few more centimetres and it would've been a bad experience”
– Imke
“There's this overwhelming acknowledgement that we simply don't control the water.”
– Anne-Linde