Friday, July 16, 2021

Stormfront Bernd

My mom called today, worried about us. I didn't know she'd have heard about the storm we had on Wednesday, the day our guest from America arrived. If you're from Louisiana you're probably laughing but since 100 people died, including 2 firefighters, I guess it was newsworthy.

We got 4 months of rain in 48 hours. I've never seen the Autobahn flooded like that and we just acted as if our cars were boats and kept going. 

Almost home, we saw the creek that runs behind our house and it had completely destroyed a neighbor's beautiful yard. What would we find at our place?

Nothing bad. Our pasture had a creek running through the middle from the street runoff, and our creek went from being 12 inches wide to 12 feet wide, raging brown water. There were 3 little geysers coming out of our land, shooting straight up comically.

Since our fence runs along the creek, and one of the Tposts was sagging, J asked me to lock the animals out of that area. And that is the extent of how we were affected at our place.

J couldn't go to work (he's still going to work even though he's on sabattical!) because the streets in Wuppertal had turned to rivers. They turned off the electricity in Wuppertal as a safety measure. 

We tried to listen to the news this morning and there was no news because there was no Internet where the news is made (!?? didn't radio come before Internet? How did they manage back then? ).

In some cities you are allowed to use your toilet, but not take a shower or wash clothes/dishes because the sewers are overloaded.

I was called in by the Red Cross but unforunately I was in Frankfurt. I volunteered to go in yesterday but by then they didn't need me. 

Here are some pictures of our local swimming pool. The awful thing is, it's only open 6 weeks a year, and apparently it takes 4 weeks to refill, so no swimming this year.

Dozens of people showed up today with shovels and buckets and wheelbarrows, to scoop out mud.

Yesterday we walked by it on our geocaching hike and our guest looked through the trees down below and asked, "What is that construction project down there?" I said, "It's our pool."



 

7 comments:

AareneX said...

I'm glad to hear y'all are on high ground. Stay safe!

TeresaA said...

I heard about the flooding and wondered if it was close to you. I’m glad all is well.

Shirley said...

Glad to hear you weren't too badly affedted. I saw some of the news photos of damage.

Shirley said...

*affected*

Kitty Bo said...

I’m so glad you and yours are ok. It’s very tragic what has happened in Germany.

Shirley said...

Just checking in again- some devastating stuff going on there. I assume you were called to duty? And hope your area is still ok.

HHmplace said...

Wow! Just a nasty storm! I'm sure you were thankful your place was spared from serious damage... I love our creek, but am really glad we sit high above it!