WADDINXVEEN, Netherlands (AP) — Jeroen Wouda and Dirk Boom walk slowly along a Dutch dike, prodding at the bone dry surface with metal rods and scanning the parched grass for patches of green that could give away the location of a leak.

In a scene that brings to mind the fictional Dutch boy who heroically plugs a hole in a dike with his finger, the two men are hunting for cracks in the low-lying Netherlands’ famed water defenses caused a drought that is gripping Europe and has fueled raging wildfires in France and Spain and sent the Danube and Rhine rivers to record low levels.

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