Forces of Nature

Thursday Febuary 11, Melbourne was hit by wild weather. The thunderstorm was the worst we had seen since we moved here one and a half year ago. There were lots of lighting and thunder before the rain arrived and when it came, it was torrential. As if a water tank had toppled in heaven and tons of water were just pouring from the sky.

We greatly welcomed the water but we knew that storms of such nature would also come with a price. First on our list of concern was the outage of electrical power. Australia has their electrical cables on poles and it is common for the poles to fall or get strike by lighting during storms, causing chaos to the traffic and businesses. The previous day, we were dining in Bacchus Marsh when a similar rain caused the whole shopping center to blackout. Luckily the chef still managed to get our food cooked. All the shops closed early that day. Our lights did flash for one second but luckily it came back and managed to stay on throughout. What caught us off guard was when water starting seeping in through the door and the entry area soon began to flood. I opened the door to the garage to sweep the water out and I discovered that the garage was starting to flood as well. This has never happened before.

Taking things that cannot be wet off the floor was our immediate task, for example, our vaccum cleaner left there overnight, as was sweeping the water back towards the drainage. KK enjoyed this episode the most as he put on his wellington boots and makeshift plastic bag rain coat and proceeded to play with the umbrella in the rain. It was no big deal, just some wet bedsheets, a little mopping and sweeping (in time for CNY). But if the rain had continued longer, I'm not so sure.





Apparantly, many other houses all had their garages flooded as well. The rain brought damages to some buildings, causing floods, leakages and even evacuation in a shopping center. We thought the worst was over when the rain stopped by nightfall but the storm and flash flood has left its impact around us.




Short cut turned wrong. The open land which Hubby drove into and got stuck. The mud tracks were left behind when his car got towed out.


The next day, when sending KK to school, Hubby promptly drove into and got stuck in a mud pool. He couldn't get the left front wheel out of the 1 foot deep mud no matter how. Finally he approached our neighbour cum landlord for help and the car was towed out with their 4-wheel drive. He came back caked with mud, both himself and the car. Took us $9 worth of high pressure spray at the car wash to clear off most of the mud.

Mud spa anyone?

The second aftermath of the storm came when we sent XX to his childcare center and realised it was closed due to the damage by the storm. The floors were flooded and parts of the ceiling leaked, causing electrical failure and roof damage. Thus XX stayed with us today, which is not a big deal since I don't work anyway. Except Hubby had planned an advance Valentine's Day lunch today. We thought it'll be just the two of us but in the end, XX was the unexpected "light bulb"....hai.





There are some lessons that we can learn from Nature, first of which is never to underestimate its force. I bet Hubby will never ever go into unpaved mud paths again after a heavy rain. Sealing our door against water seepage and putting important electrical items on raised platforms are also some areas we'll take note of if we were to leave home for an extended period of time. Sometimes, such small scale disasters are not such a bad thing. It puts our system and infrastructure to the test and exposes the weakest links for us to rectify.