Over the last 30 years, through 2013, Portland averaged 39.14 inches of rain annually. The record for one day rainfall is 6.68 inches, way back on December 13, 1882. Yeah, of course it's a little 'apples to oranges' because we're in the tropics here - but there is rain and then there is RAIN.
The storm that caused part of Volcán Concepción to let loose near the tiny village of Santa Teresa dumped 14.9 inches of rain in just under 24 hours. Think about that for a minute. The island received 38% of Portland's annual rainfall in a single day.
Now imagine the floods and the wall of mud striking in the dark. The landslide happened around 8:30 or so in the evening. Thankfully - if there is such a thing - most people were still awake. In hindsight, it would have been much worse if it had hit in the middle of the night, when people were sleeping. In all, there were 5 landslides that hit the island, all on the Concepción side. Surprisingly, there was only one casualty, albeit a tragic one. A 5 year old girl was swept from her mothers' arms while they were trying to cross the floods to get to higher ground.
Two weeks after we got back from our final border run, we hopped on the bikes and headed for Santa Teresa, to get an up close look at the devastation caused during the heavy rains a few weeks back. We had seen a little of the damage when we'd traveled via taxi from Moyogalpa to our place, but we only caught glimpses as twilight was setting in when we went by.
We left the house early to beat the heat and humidity. The unpaved part, the section from our village to Santa Cruz where the paved road starts, was much worse than we'd ever seen it. The heavy rainfall had washed away a lot of the dirt, leaving the rocks. And because trucks and buses started running as soon as they could, even when the road was still saturated, the potholes, dips and ruts were bigger, deeper and a little more treacherous. Still, cruising on two wheels is actually easier than picking a line through it on four, so we made decent time. In true 'Dave on a bike' fashion, I still managed to hit most of the sizable rocks anyway.
A new 6-inch curb across the road. |
Looking at Maderas… I can see my house from here! |
You can see the makeup of the road in the pictures above. They pour a concrete border on either side, then lay interlocking paver stones to construct the road surface. We got to a point where the road gradually climbs and saw that all the earth between the concrete border and the V-shaped gutter had washed away. The immensity of this is unreal.
Check it:
Photo #1 -
The gutter couldn't handle the amount of water, obviously! |
Photo #2 -
Photo #3 -
A little farther on, we came to the school. And… yikes. The community had some of the classrooms cleared but as you can see, it was still quite a mess, even a couple of weeks later.
The two classrooms in this picture appeared to be cleaned and in use. |
This classroom? Not so much. |
This is the road, normally two lanes. You can get a feel for how deep the slide was. |
The mud and debris were piled up like snow in winter. |
Plus, it would have been a little weird to be taking pictures of peoples' personal travesty. Pics from the road would be just fine, thank you. A little less of an intrusion. While we live on the island and have been 'adopted' as locals in our community, we wanted to respect the people who were most impacted by the storm and not be 'tourists'. Hope this makes sense.
The vegetation used to grow right up to the road, just like at the right in the picture. |
Nothing but rocks and dirt. A veritable moon-scape. |
In the photo above, under the trees well back from the road, there used to be a house. While we were taking our pictures, there were people gathered, singing and praying. A very somber atmosphere.
You can see the scar up the volcano where this slide originated.
|
Back home, we could see the mudslide scar from the beach. |
You can see uprooted trees in the background. |
The main water channel carved a deep course. |
Give me bread, but give me roses, too: We enjoyed the view and the garden, as well as the food. |
Mudslides not withstanding, there's always time for street baseball. |
They were skeptical of David's American style batting, until he struck out. |
***** ***** ***** *****
Note:
Below are some links with more stories about the record rainfall and photos of the damage:
An expat's blog
From lainfo.es
A YouTube clip taken the day after the slides
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