October 1, 2009
So about a week after we got back from our vacation, we started to have some really heavy rains. We had heard about the floods in the Philippines on the radio and sure enough a few days later strong winds came through Cambodia. Kampong Thom province had some really strong winds and I guess several houses blew over and 9 people died. While no houses blew over in our area that we knew of, we did lose a few papaya trees to the strong winds and our neighbor’s front shack in their front yard blew down. Then a day or so later the rain started.
It kept raining, at first quite hard for several hours. It continued on through the night with lightning and fairly strong winds. It had not let up that morning and while a bit lighter throughout the day, it rained for an entire 21 hours straight.
Around 3pm that afternoon, Will went on a bike ride just to get out of the house for a little bit. He came back about 10 minutes later and told me I should come along and check out some of the town.
We went over to one of the bridges over River Puok. It was raging really pretty fast and pretty high; lots of branches just sweeping along the water. Then we were going to go over to a small dam to the north of town a little bit. On the way, we passed by a recycling place – who was beginning to slowly lose all of their goods to be recycled to the rising water in the yard. Then we went by the 1st house we lived in for the first month that we were here. They were trying to dam up the water that was slowly beginning to fill into their yard. If you remember from previous posts, this house is on the newly built National Road 6. When they built the road, they built it up quite a bit, several feet higher from the majority of the houses on the road. While they did put in a drainage system; during this particular storm; all the rain was trying to drain into River Puok, got overwhelmed and the water was instead going backwards…into everyone’s yards along the national road, because the river was just too high.
We stopped at our old host family’s house and grabbed some shovels and tried to help with the uphill battle of trying to create a dam. It helped a little, but was only going to help for so long, and finally they told us to stop as it was getting dark. She had asked us if the water was rising at our place. And when we had left, it hadn’t really yet. Our current house (and grounds) is one of the highest on our street, as they put up a cement fence around their lot and filled in quite a bit of dirt in it as well a few years back.
Anyway, our old host mom mentioned, that if it continues to rain like it is; the Tonle Sap Lake will begin to fill up (which is where the Puok River drains) and pretty soon all of that water will continue to creep north, our way and most of the houses will be flooded too. She also mentioned that the alligators will be out b/c the river will be so high. While I was mostly skeptical of the last remark, I guess it was a possibility.
We decided to get back to our house and check on its status rather than continuing our expedition. Approaching it we could see that the rice fields which surround our place were getting pretty full of water, and you could start to see the waterline rise around the cement wall that surrounds our house. Still no water in our yard though.
We decided that, maybe it’d be a good idea to pack a few things and start raising some of our belongings that are on the ground (books, electronics etc) just to take a few precautions. So we did that in case it didn’t stop raining and we had to move upstairs. I worked on that task as Will began to make dinner.
When we sat down to dinner around 7pm, it was already dark, but I took a glance and looked into the yard and noticed that it was mostly covered in water now. We ate dinner quickly and started to take our packing a little more seriously. At 9pm the water had raised an inch. That’s when we decided to elevate our little fridge on some bricks as well as some of our storage trunks.
The rain continued through most of the night. We set an alarm at 12 and 2 just to check on the status to see if we needed to move anything. I remember waking up once and hearing nothing but the sound of water, dripping all over the place. It almost sounded like we were sleeping on a lake. Luckily we were still dry and none had gotten into our house.
The following morning it did stop. Thankfully. Luckily our patio was built high enough. We were 3 inches from having water inside our house, and we were happy that we didn’t have to deal with that mess. The entire yard was full. All of the newly planted flowers were under water. All the weeding that the grandmother and I worked on…were under water too.
I talked to our host dad, and while we were the only ones on our street without water in it at 6am, he mentioned that if it continued to rain today, we most likely would have water in our house too.
I decided to get out and grab some food incase the rain would continue on though the day. When I got to the market area, it was completely flooded. The main part of the market was knee deep in water. Some of the sellers moved out into the streets to sell some of their goods. I was able to buy quite a few vegetables…and a little later, I saw a crowd of people hovered around another seller. She was selling pork (the only one around)… people were getting antsy and pushing and shoving and putting money in the seller’s face. No one was taking chances on getting some meat to have on hand; nor did they care of the foreigner got any or not. I eventually got my way in and was able to buy some. But yea, you’d see people buying huge boxes of raman noodles, or other dried goods, and bringing back what they could incase the rains should continue.
Later on, Will and I went out to tour the town via bike. Most Everything on the north side of road 6 was flooded. The road acted as a solid dam. Many houses were knee, some even waist deep in water. Those who paved and raised their ground after the road construction was finished were happy they did; but in some places that wasn’t even enough.
We got over to our school and the entrance to that was thigh-deep on me. The main office building wasn’t under water but many of the classrooms were. The basketball court was under water and so was the little guard stand at the front gate. Across the street, a new house had just laid a cement driveway. Will did comment on the poor methods of laying cement that they do in this country, and the flood made it a prime example. Many places skip putting in metal rebar to help support the cement, and then they only pour it about 2” thick. – So this brand new, probably 3 week old driveway was crumbling and washing away right before their eyes.
The entrance to the Artisans De Angkor Silk farm was quite a bit under water. We witnessed a tour bus full of people that stopped at the entrance with its blinker on for quite a while, as the driver was on the phone pondering whether or not to take the chance of trying to drive the bus over the dirt road covered in a few feet of water.
There were tons of kids playing in the water, building make-shift rafts floating around. Luckily most of the water wasn’t rushing and there weren’t any big currents or anything. But I guess the cleanliness of the water may have been something people should’ve considered a little more. Near the recycling place on the 2nd day, we saw them floating on bags stuffed with empty plastic bottles, trying to round up even more of the trash that had floated away.
It was quite the scene in our town for the few days after. School was delayed a week. It took a good solid week before things got back to normal.
Eventually things did dry out. It was a bit smelly for a few of those days, but the town was happy to not have any heavy rain showers so they could get their homes and businesses back in order.
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