As the small Dutch city of Valkenburg on Friday began clearing up after floods that wreaked a deadly toll in Germany and Belgium, how the Netherlands has so far escaped relatively lightly may hold clues to preventing future catastrophes.
Although Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte declared Limburg province a disaster area, the nation has seen no reported deaths and few injuries.
By contrast, more than 120 people have died in neighbouring Germany and Belgium amid chaotic scenes of collapsing homes and mangled infrastructure.
What may have made a difference in the Netherlands, a country with a long and vaunted pedigree in water management, is lessons learnt from recent flooding events that led to new ways to cope with an unexpected deluge.
To be sure, geography helped too: Limburg residents said they had more time to prepare as floodwaters rushed towards the region from Germany and Belgium.
"Despite records being broken by the enormous volume of water, the situation in the Maas (Meuse) is under control," said Eric van Beerendonk, a spokesman for the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch government arm that handles water issues.
"This is due among other things to our water management programmes," he told AFP.
After major flooding in 1993 and again in early 1995, when 250,000 people and one million animals had to be evacuated, the Dutch reshaped areas around the rivers.
One such project, the "Room for the Rivers" programme, is designed to allow overflow along river banks, so spreading out water and enabling it to reach the North Sea faster.
"Instead of building higher dykes, we are actually giving rivers more space, where possible," the Rijkswaterstaat said of the €2.3 billion project, finished in 2019.
In the Maas, a similar project was started in 2005 to give the river more room to widen, while dykes along its banks were also being strengthened.
'Well prepared'
"Although many countries have started to improve flood risk management since the EU's floods directive" in 2007, "the Dutch may have had a head start," said Marleen van Rijswick, professor of European and national water law at the University of Utrecht.
"The Netherlands continuously invests in these programmes... and there is now ongoing attention to prevent flooding and the consequence of climate change," she told AFP.
While waters receded in Limburg, a few tense days still lie ahead, with river levels peaking further downstream as waters flow towards the North Sea.
Back in the scenic city of Valkenburg, where roads and cars were washed away despite the measures, residents were pumping out water from homes and cellars on Friday.
The sound of generators to run water pumps could be heard around parts of the city that had been swamped, while the Dutch army constructed a temporary bridge to shore up a crossing damaged by the water.
"We truly had a river running through Valkenburg. It was bizarre," said resident Paola Baakman.
Images from Roermond, about 50 kilometres north of Valkenburg, showed a flooded campsite close to the Maas River.
But "we were well prepared," said Stan van der Leeuw, a 58-year-old Roermond resident.
"I do think we're more used to it, but it also had to do with the fact that we had more time to prepare.
"In Germany and Belgium it happened so suddenly they just didn't have time to do anything," he said.