San Francisco Chronicle: On the night of Jan. 31, 1953, a hurricane descended on the northeast coast of the Netherlands, whipping up high spring tides into 18-foot surges.
As dike after dike failed, floods washed over at least 600 square miles, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and killing more than 1,800.
The tragedy set off a decades-long campaign to ensure it never happened again, as the nation adopted an essentially zero-tolerance policy for mass flooding. They erected a closed system of levees built to withstand...