All car parks and parts of the Graspop Festival campsite in Belgium will be closed over the coming days due to flooding. Local residents are helping by providing parking and camping spaces, after a call from Mayor Dessel.

Festival grounds in various places in the Netherlands and Belgium are suffering from the heavy amounts of rain that fell recently. Just last week, hundreds of cars got stuck in Harlingen mud in the Oerol Festival car park. This week, parking lots were flooded at Grasspop, a metal festival that attracts about 200,000 visitors over four days. Locals are now offering a way out.

“Tents are allowed in the park, and in the morning I make bacon and eggs,” says Willie Patten. Flemish radio VRT. He has been a visitor to Graspop for many years and is happy to help festival-goers. He also has no problem driving back and forth to the festival site. He asks for a small fee.

People know how to find and help each other, especially through Facebook. Some even make their spare room available for free.

This weekend, there are also festivals on the program in the Netherlands that want to do everything they can to ensure their visitors experience as little flooding as possible.

Pinkpop is taking all scenarios into account, although little rain is expected and part of the site is asphalt. “We have additional road pads on hand, which have been loaned from other festivals,” says a spokesperson for organizing company Mojo Concerts.

Parking spaces for 1,500 to 2,000 in parking lot P5 remain closed to festival-goers with a weekend ticket. The grass is in very bad condition. People with a parking ticket will get their money back from Mojo.

The Pinkpop organization shared a video on social media this morning with tips “so your weekend doesn’t fall into the water.” For example, visitors are advised to bring a coat. As usual, the use of umbrellas is prohibited because they obstruct the audience’s view.

Since festival grounds are often used and trampled several times a year, it is very difficult for the land to handle all the water. In addition, the heavy amount of rain that has fallen in recent months has left the soil extremely saturated.

“I’m almost 60 years old and I’ve never experienced this before,” says Gerard Korthals, a soil biologist at Wageningen University. He stresses that the amount of recent rainfall combined with a relatively cool period is unknown territory for soil experts.

However, problems at festival sites are expected to continue for a while, as the ground is full of water. It’s hard to say what will happen next.

“If extreme drought and heat arrive now, we don’t really know what will happen to the soil,” says Korthals.