WADDINXVEEN, Netherlands (AP) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 famed water defenses caused a drought that is gripping Europe and has fueled raging wildfires<\/a> in France and Spain and sent the Danube<\/a> and Rhine rivers to record low<\/a> levels.<\/p>\n kAm&?=:<6 E96 =@H\\E649 D@=FE:@? \ud83d\ude15 p>6C:42? 2FE9@C |2CJ |2A6D s@586VD `hE9\\46?EFCJ DE@CJ[ >@56C? 5:<6 A2EC@=D 2C6 23=6 E@ A=@E A@DD:3=6 AC@3=6>D 42FD65 3J 5C@F89E \ud83d\ude15 2? 2AA 2?5 D6?5 :E E@ 2FE9@C:E:6D H9@ 42? E96? BF:4<=J 42CCJ @FC C6A2:CD]k^Am<\/p>\n kAmx? 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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WADDINXVEEN, Netherlands (AP) \u2014 Jeroen Wouda and Dirk Boom walk slowly along a Dutch dike, prodding at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3556,94,135,49579,49578,122,5,38090,96,49577,31034,8452,9092,38374,46],"class_list":["post-65547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-agriculture","tag-business","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-droughts","tag-floods","tag-general-news","tag-germany","tag-heat-waves","tag-lifestyle","tag-netherlands-drought-water-dikes-climate","tag-transportation-and-shipping","tag-waterways","tag-weather","tag-wildfires","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}