Several weeks after the closure of the last major film studio theme park, I encountered for the first time the prime product of the growth industry of the last two decades - disaster tourism. The theme park sites in Orlando, Los Angeles and Paris had suffered many years of decline despite new attractions being opened to reproduce the seemingly endless public appetite for re-living the greatest disasters of our era. The mock Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that had been built in Florida brought in less than 5% of the income of the real thing, despite the daily shows of earthquake, tsunami and hydrogen explosions that rocked the Everglades and annoyed the somnolent crocodiles. The real thing in Japan was much more potent to the imaginations of the global tourists who flew in from all over the world. The addition of the long closed Kennedy Space Center to the theme park empire and the recreations of the 1986 Challenger disaster and the explosive failure of the USA’s return to manned flight brought in many times the revenue of the major rides and attractions of the now defunct theme parks..
With this in mind I found myself at the Flood Disaster Experience near the region of what used to be called The Netherlands, before the sea overwhelmed the man made polders and inundated the seawater pumps. With the first country in the world to be sunk off the map, a whole culture and language had disappeared with it, the refugees of this country that were spread to all corners of the globe readily forgetting their native language with the impulse to trade at maximum efficiency.
I was part of a small group of people to attend the first week’s performances of the extreme flooding hydrodynamics experience. After two hours of promotional videos and technographic presentations, we were prepared for the highlight of the visit, a live recreation of the great breach of the Afsluitdijk. A scale recreation of the Netherlands had been created in a large expanse of flat land, and part of the experience was to get as close to the breach as possible by standing on large floating canvas-like material surfaces on top of the water. This way we could appreciate the complex and impressive hydrodynamic effects produced by this historical disaster.
The woman in charge of the demonstration distributed coloured mackintoshes - each one of us had a slightly different task to perform, a different part of the disaster to monitor. Later on we would debrief and share our experiences and observations. This debrief would be recorded on video and after being intercut with the recreated disaster footage, would be purchasable later on as a souvenir. I donned a yellow mac, to indicate that I would be stood some distance from the breach of the dam or dyke, a number of the group members wore red to monitor the moment the wall of water hit land, and a woman was given a black waterproof and asked to monitor the breach itself.
The woman controller stood back under a tree and ordered the simulation operative to start the show by unleashing the pent up risen seawaters behind the dyke. Almost immediately I felt a pulse under my feet as a shock-wave propagated forwards away from the breach. A jolt like a heartbeat under the water. I remained easily upright as the material surface I was standing on was large and sufficiently inflexible to provide a safe and firm footing. I watched as a wall of water surged forwards away from the dyke towards the scaled coastline, model trains and cars moving in the distance to indicate the normalcy of life on that fateful day when years of rising sea levels finally exposed a catastrophic manufacturing defect in the dyke’s construction. However as the water approached the model coastline and the group members in their red outfits, a hydraulic jump formed bringing the wall of water to a standstill. The instructor beckoned to the red team to come closer to the wall, knowing that the hydraulic jump at this point of the simulation would be stable for some time, the unique subsea topology of the IJsselmeer producing this impressive effect.
As more water poured through the breach in the damn, the hydraulic wall remained stable, increasing in size and I felt the platform I was stood on rising up on the increasing water levels. The red group stared in awe as the wall of water rose over 10 metres, like the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus.
Out of the corner of my eye, however, I noticed that an intense whirlpool was starting to form near the dyke’s breach. The woman in the black raincoat raised her hands in delight, as if she was conjuring up this eddy herself. I shouted to the group members in red who were now some distance below those of us above the hydraulic jump, trying to direct their attention to the developing malestrom. However they remained transfixed by the increasing size of the wall of water, dancing a merry jig hand in hand with evident joy.
I turned to look at the instructor. Seeing her reaction was calm and positive, I surmised this was all part of the script.
By now a second hydraulic jump was forming near the developing whirlpool, the limitless quantity of the ersatz North Sea providing a continuous supply of hydraulic energy. As the whirlpool gathered momentum and power I watched as the woman in black stepped onto the edge of the spinning water, entranced and hypnotized by the swiftly swirling waters. Sharing a good deal of her entrancement and delight, I remained at my place on the now faster rising canvas. Somehow by the uplifting flow of the clear water and the gyroscopic effects of the rotating cataract, the woman in black remained stable and upright, stood up on the whirling rim of water. With a wild and vivid expression on her face, the woman in black spun round and round on the rim of the whirlpool, black mackintosh flailing behind her, the lacework of her black dress free and flapping behind her in the wind, her black hair released and streaming around and around, about once per second. Instinctively, it seemed, she started dancing on her way around the edge, hands whirling and rotating in a fusion of flamenco, bollywood and belly dancing.
By now the instructor had left her tree, and was watching with some concern. Evidently there had been a departure from the script. The group members in red had stopped their jig and were now transfixed by the insane sight of the woman in black, rotating and gyrating in an expanding circle of water, a gesticulating black form moving faster and faster around the whirlpool.
The eddy deepened and moved closer to the second hydraulic jump that had formed nearer the compromised dyke. As the whirlpool approached the watery precipice, the edge of the spinning water bulged out of the hydraulic wall like the bowl of a wine glass, the conical base of the cup forming on the edge of the water wall, a spinning column of water below mimicking the stem of a wine glass. The upward pressure at the rim of the whirlpool broke down as the complex hydraulics reset themselves around the new structure. With this reconfiguration the woman in black slowly sank into the edge of the bowl of whirling water until she was below the level of the top of the whirlpool. Oblivious she continued her dance, faster and faster around the eddy. Now the coat, her clothes and her hair flowed in waves behind her as she continued her hand dance, visible though the edge of the water wall, around and around, now spinning past twice a second. The woman in black formed a bizarre moving form seen through the clear water as if through glass.
Clearly concerned now for the woman in black, the instructor instinctively shouted out to her to step out of the whirlpool. Suddenly the spell of the dance was broken and the woman in black’s trance dropped instantly. Panicked at finding herself deep in the vortex, she starting to try to turn, legs and arms flailing madly. She opened her mouth to scream but a silent bubble of air burst out. Her hands and legs broke through the edge of the water and air was sucked in around her, the water writhing and foaming in response to the mad spasmic jerkings of the woman’s arms and legs. As if ensconced in a chrysalis, she was surrounded by a tube of bubbles and foam, still spinning endlessly round the vortex.
The break in the edge of the water wall by the movement of the woman in black’s arms and legs sent ripples of instability up and down the hydraulic wall, and the surface began to break down. With a sickening whoosh the woman in black found herself on an ejection trajectory in the fast collapsing vortex, her flailing body emerging from the vertical water sheet and falling with some speed towards the hard floor that had opened up with the merging of the two hydraulic steps, now both oscillating with impending instability. I caught a glimpse of the hard ground exposed below the disintegrating wine glass shape and saw the water turn red.
Without thinking I took hold of the instructor, moved her back to the tree and comforted her as she sobbed. Looking over her shoulder I could see the red-dressed group members running to safety before the fast collapsing hydraulic wall. The model coast began its inondation, a tsunami picking up the model cars and trains and pushing them on, over the flat model landscape.
