Dutch earthquakes
How efficiently the Dutch government can work ... sometimes
Dear reader,
Did you know that the Netherlands has earthquakes?
Here’s the thing, though: they’re human-caused!
Natural gas
It all has to do with natural gas extraction. Here in my province, Groningen – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say under my province – is an enormous natural gas bubble about three kilometers down. For 60 years the extraction of that gas has provided heat, cooking fuel and power all over the Netherlands. It is also exported to Germany, Belgium and France.
While this has brought great wealth and prosperity to the country, it’s hard to believe no one thought about the possible consequences: removing the gas causes the ground to subside, which means earthquakes. People in the eastern part of the province started noticing them in the first few years of this century.
(As an aside, here’s my article about what to see in Groningen province, with lots of photos, if you’re interested. Groningen is a beautiful province!)
The turning point was in 2012, when an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale hit the village of Huizinge and the government in The Hague finally started paying attention to the complaints from Groningen province.
If you have ever lived somewhere like San Francisco or Los Angeles, 3.6 won’t sound bad to you, but the landscape is different here. Houses are traditionally built of unreinforced brick. The land itself is flat and peaty and the water table isn’t deep; the houses are not set on bedrock. Some houses were so badly damaged in the Huizinge quake or others that have happened since then that they became unlivable or their walls had to be propped up with beams.
Earthquake compensation
The government took notice, and eventually the NAM (Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij or Dutch Natural Gas Society) took responsibility, along with the Dutch state. The government made the decision to reduce gradually the amount of gas extracted each year so that the gas field will be closed, in theory, by 2022. At its peak in the 1970s the gas companies extracted 100 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
In the meantime, in fits and starts, the government set up a mechanism for compensating the victims, both for repairing the damage to their houses – or in some cases replacing them – and for the reduction in value their houses have suffered. After all, who wants to buy a house in a place where earthquakes could still happen as the ground settles?
At first, the victims had to wait months or years to get any compensation. Once a system was in place, though, the process became more efficient. As of this week, €334,000,000 ($399 million) has been paid out in compensation for reduction in value and €846,700,000 ($1.011 billion) in compensation for physical damage (stats from the Instituut Mijnbouwschade Groningen).
Our new / old house
This is where my husband and I come into the story. We bought a house here in the city of Groningen in about 2013. Here in the city no one feels the earthquakes that happen regularly out in the eastern part of the province. To be honest, it didn’t even occur to us that this might be a problem.
It’s a lovely house. We were only looking casually, since we didn’t want to move yet. We were planning to downsize as soon as all kids – our own and fosters – moved out. But we saw this one and fell in love and bought it.
It dates from about 1885 and was originally a coachman’s house. It’s in a row of five houses on the inside of a city block, so there’s no street noise, yet we’re a five-minute walk from the center of town. The living room ceiling has wonderful original paintwork: a center plasterwork piece painted in bright colors in about 1885, and an art nouveau border that was added in probably 1910-1915. We love it.
For seven years, we rented out the house, since we weren’t ready to move in. The tenants didn’t let us know when there was damage unless it had to do with an appliance. So it wasn’t until they left and we started renovating last winter and then moved in in April that we saw how much damage there was: cracks in the walls in several places inside and on the front outside.
Our earthquake damage claim
Our new neighbor tipped us off that perhaps this wasn’t all just old-age damage. On her advice, we filed a complaint with the Instituut Mijnbouwschade Groningen (Institute of Gas Extraction Damage Groningen or IMG). It took just a simple form.
The IMG is independent of both the government and the NAM. That allows it to make truly unbiased decisions based on the evidence of damage caused to homes and businesses.
The process was remarkably efficient. A man contacted us from the IMG, saying that his job was to advocate for us and to supervise the whole process. We made an appointment about a month or two later for the inspection.
On inspection day, the man who had called arrived along with another man. This second man was the independent inspector. He didn’t work for the NAM but was hired in by the IMG to make an unbiased judgement about the damage.
I pointed out all of the cracks in the walls that we had noticed, both in the house and outside. He noticed a few more and took lots of pictures. He couldn’t give us an official report right away, but he did warn us that some of these were just because it’s an old house. You can see in the photo above how uneven our front door is; that’s just old age.
About a month later we got our report. It documented everything, both the cracks that were due to earthquake damage and the ones that weren’t. This documentation will serve us well if further earthquakes cause more damage in the future.
The report gave an estimate of how much it would cost to repair the earthquake damage if we hired professional contractors to do the job. That is the amount of money we were offered. It wasn’t much, but every bit helps when you’re renovating a house.
We could accept the offer or contest it, leading to another inspection. We accepted it. What’s interesting is that there’s actually no obligation to spend the money on the repairs. We can DIY it if we choose, or just leave it undone. We won’t, of course. Some of the inside damage we’ve already repaired. The outside is waiting for warmer weather.
The whole process was surprisingly smooth and painless, with minimal paperwork and no need to nag to get it done. It’s a demonstration of what can be done once a decision is made.
Now if only they could do the same with vaccinations, I’d be thrilled.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Rachel
P.S. I write about independent travel at Rachel’s Ruminations. Please join me there!
Fascinating. Learned a good deal from this - had no idea they were extracting gas in Holland, much less sending it to France, among other countries. In France, to get compensation, woo-ja - what a nightmare that might very well be.