Freak Flooding

This is the junction that leads to my work place (turn left), 

to my fiance's area (straight ahead),

to my area (turn right)

Two nights ago the whole country was hit by six hours or so of heavy downpour. Didn't think much of it. I made my way over to my fiance's place that evening, it was still the early part of the heavy rain. Around 11 at night, his mother told us to look outside and we were surprised to see that the whole street was filled up with water. He lived in a cul-de-sac and the house was right at the end. The water was coming from the river behind the house and it came gushing to the front, and at the beginning of the street the storm drain was overflowing with water and was making its way towards us. Water was coming in from both ends. Neighbours were moving their cars to higher grounds nearby, mainly our driveway because the house was built higher than the rest of the houses on that street, to avoid getting their cars being submerged. One house was built so low water came up to thigh level. I couldn't get home until the next morning.

On the way home along the highway I saw abandoned cars at the side of the roads. These were cars that got caught in the flood and the engines died. I wondered how the rest of the country fared. On my way to work, saw more abandoned cars and one car, a Mercedes no less, was pointing in the other direction and at an angled that it blocked a whole lane. The current must have been so strong it pushed the car. The tunnel underpass on the highway was completely filled up with water and I had to take a detour. Some roads were unpassable due to the amount of mud and debris the flood water had left behind. And when I got to work our building had no electricity. The power station for the area was 3 feet underwater. Some of my colleagues didn't come to work because their houses was affected as well. Some places had five feet of water in half hour that night. One friend of mine spent five hours driving around trying to make her way home or at least a place to stay. She ended up sleeping in her car.

Newspapers for the past few days published pictures of the flooding. I found a link that got pictures that even I could never imagine that it actually happened. There were two reported death, one was a lady who's house got hit by a landslide and the walls collapsed on her, she lived up my road. And the other was a teenage girl who tried to walk through the flood water to get home and got swept from under her feet and got herself jammed in the storm drain and drowned, and that street is next to where my fiance lives.

The past few days the atmosphere was solemn, some roads were cleared up and others still caked with mud. It rained this afternoon and I was on edge thinking that if it's still raining after an hour I'm going home, because where I worked, it's in the worst affected area of the flood and I had no intention of being caught in it.

It may not be as disastrous as some places around the world, but it sure was for us. I labelled it under, 'interesting'.