(6 Jan 2012)
Woltersum village
1. Wide of Woltersum village and rising canal
2. Wide of dyke and sand bags
3. Wide of a house behind the dyke
4. Mid of house, sand bags
5. Wide of engineering crews transporting bags
6. Mid of crews placing bags around house
7. Wide of critical dyke in Woltersum
Ten Boer, 5 kilometres from Woltersum
8. Wide of parked military trucks
9. Wide of evacuation centre
10. Mid of soldiers
11. Various of evacuated Woltersum residents
12. Various of a woman knitting
13. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Ton de Boer, 55 year-old man from Woltersum:
"At this moment the water is a bit lower and I hope it will stay like that so we can go back to our houses. But I am not so sure. We have to wait."
14. Wide of evacuated residents
15. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Marta Steenhuis, 60 year-old woman from Woltersum:
"We don't always have such problems (with floods) but when the wind is strong in the North Sea all this water simply can't be absorbed by the sea."
16. Wide of soldiers getting food and drink
Woltersum village
17. Wide of critical dyke in Woltersum
STORYLINE
Police and military personnel evacuated 800 people from four villages in the low-lying northern Netherlands on Friday, amid fears that water would breach a critical dyke following days of torrential rains.
Authorities said that a section of the dyke along a major canal could give way and submerge hundreds of hectares (acres) of land under up to 1.5 metres (5 feet) of water.
55 year-old Ton de Boer was one of those evacuated from his home early in the morning to a sports hall in Ten Boer, about 5 kilometres from his village of Woltersum.
"At this moment the water is a bit lower and I hope it will stay like that so we can go back to our houses," he said.
Dozens of villagers and troops spent hours on Thursday night piling sandbags on top of plastic sheets in an attempt to strengthen and waterproof the dyke.
The local water authority said the emergency repairs had stabilised the situation after water had begun seeping through the dyke overnight.
In the early afternoon, authorities opened sluice gates to allow water to pour out to sea, a move that will lower water levels and ease pressure on the strained dykes.
The Defence Ministry also said an F-16 fighter jet equipped with a special camera used to detect roadside bombs in Afghanistan would fly over the region Friday to monitor the state of the dykes.
The evacuations, 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Amsterdam, came after a combination of torrential rain and powerful northwesterly winds saturated the country and prevented water being pumped into the sea.
A quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level and 55 percent of the country is considered susceptible to flooding, but the country has learned to live with the ever-present threat of high water, and devastating floods are rare.
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