The Hamburg Flood in Public Memory Culture
Today, the Storm Flood of 1962 forms an integral part of local and national memory culture. Public commemoration events, monuments, and media coverage assure that the disaster is not forgotten.
Today, the Storm Flood of 1962 forms an integral part of local and national memory culture. Public commemoration events, monuments, and media coverage assure that the disaster is not forgotten.
The Great Flood of 1962 was the most devastating natural disaster to strike Germany in the twentieth century. In Hamburg, over one hundred thousand people were trapped by the water, and 315 people died, despite massive rescue operations.
In November 1951 the Polesine, a flatland enclosed by the rivers Po and Adige in northeastern Italy, was hit by massive flooding. Hundreds of hectares were submerged and tens of thousands of people left homeless. The effects of a particularly heavy wet season were compounded by insufficient flood defenses.
The St. Petersburg flood of 1824, in which the level of the river Neva rose to the 4 meter 20 centimeter mark, is the greatest in the history of the city. The city did not recover from the destructive effects of the flood until the mid-1830s.
In 1975, construction began for the Thames Barrier, a moveable flood defense located on the River Thames, downstream of central London in the United Kingdom.