The Storm of the Century

While I have been keeping up my writing off-line, I have not yet published it here.  And instead of uploading something previously written (mostly on comparisons and observations between the UAE, Oman, Morocco, and San Diego), there was a singularly shocking event that happened on Wednesday night that takes precedence.

Every Wednesday we have been having group dinners.  One of us cooks and hosts the rest of the Moore students (and often Leigh’s roommate Ellen, who was absent this time since she was in Kenya).  Leigh cooked us a Nepali feast, I then cooked an Asian smorgasbord, and this Wednesday, Anne cooked dinner for breakfast.  We enjoyed the amazing oatmeal pancakes and egg casserole and then Clinton and Dave went to smoke sheesha.  Aaron dropped them off and brought the car back.  When he returned, we all went to the roof because there was lightning high high up in the sky.  It was unlike most lightning I’ve seen.  I remember a particularly wonderful rain-free lightning storm in Redding, CA many many years ago, but this was odd.  The lightning didn’t come down, but instead shot sideways.  We were on the roof for quite some time when we decided to come back in because the lightning was becoming less spectacular. 

 

Aaron, Leigh, Matthew, and I were sitting with Jacob and Anne in their majlis (sitting room) when a strong gust of wind blew off some of the wood surrounding the A/C unit and it went directly towards Matt.  Some leaves and sand were blown in, and we were generally amused.  We felt rain coming through the window, so we shut it, but not long afterwards, water started pouring in the room through the air conditioner, around the sides, and under the windows.  It looked like a scene from a horror movies: the walls started crying brown water, the wind shrieked through every hidden crevice, and the windows began to rattle as they were being pounded by the hail.  Anne and Jacob have a porch, so the water started streaming under the doors!  It was still pretty funny until the power went out and we realized that it was serious.  We had already pulled most of the plugs off the floor, but then we started unplugging everything, lighting candles, and pulling things away from the windows.  I went back to our apartment and made sure the same was happening there.  Aaron and Jacob turned off the circuit breakers and we watched helplessly as water mixed with sand and debris poured into every room.  It wasn’t just wind and water being hurled at our building, but large pieces of hail were being hurled at our windows.  Anne had ordered everyone into interior rooms and after having cleared the floors; I shut all the doors in our apartment and waited in the hallway which does not have windows.  I was afraid of a window breaking, which was why we had evacuated the rooms.  The fans in the kitchen and bathroom windows, since they were without power, were working against us by spewing rain into their respective rooms.

By the end of the storm, our majlis was covered in more than an inch of water, our bedroom was coated with it, our bathtub was covered in debris, and it was lucky that we had moved our microwave from underneath the kitchen window.  Nothing had broken and very little was ruined, but it was going to take a lot of clean-up.  We went onto the roof again and saw a very different picture from before.  Of course, all the lights were out, but everything was covered in water except the street we live on.  A lot of people drive on the sand to get to their homes and some cars were stuck in the mud.  There was hail piled up on roofs, signs torn off of buildings, and everyone was surveying the damage. 

We did not realize how easy we had it (although whoever expected a third floor apartment to flood) until we went around town.  Dave and Clinton were still at sheesha and Leigh wanted to look at her apartment, after having seen what the storm did at ours.  We waited a bit before venturing out, but I was desirous to make sure Dave and Clinton were okay and I really wanted to see what the town looked like.  We quickly found out that it was really just OUR road that wasn’t flooded, but every other one was.  We made it to the sheesha café and Clinton and Dave, possibly unaware of the amount of damage affected by the storm, wanted to stay and smoke.  Matt joined them, and Aaron, Leigh, and I were bent on getting her home.  We turned onto Sohar Road and saw a different sight from just the flooding.  The wind had torn up nearly every other tree by the roots and some of them lay across the road.  Signs were twisted metal heaps on the ground.  Virtually every non-municipal light was broken, and there was more flooding everywhere.  The parking lot to the largest mosque in town was a swimming pool of brown water.  We made it to Leigh’s with a couple wet spots—although I always drove behind people to gauge the height of the water in case we felt like turning around. 

The sight was a little silly because most of the men in Buraimi wear long white kandoras, which are essentially robes or dresses.  Not wanting to get them covered in flood water, they had hiked them up and were running around town showing a lot of leg. 

We got to Leigh’s place and found one emergency light on and the stairs were very wet.  She lives on the third floor as well, and when we came in we found her room completely flooded.  Her bed was wet and she was very lucky that her computer and a load of laundry were not in her room and had remained dry, because everything else was soaked.  We surveyed the damage and found that both fans in the bathrooms had been blown in, but that the water had probably drained from the tub.  The living room was bone dry, but Ellen’s room had water on the floor but not her bed.  Leigh decided to stay and we returned home to start mopping up.  On the way back, I took a road that I assumed would be dry and ended up in the deepest water of the night.  The brakes got a bit wet, but we were close to home and I drove carefully back. 

The next day, we saw that the effects were lasting, but also that the border we cross frequently (and the one we HAD to cross to go to Dubai that evening for the South Carolina Trade Commission) was FLOODED.  Not just flooded, but FLOODED.  They were turning people away and we did not know how we were going to get into the UAE.  There are these lovely tent canopies above the borders and one was in tatters hanging down into the flood water.  We learned that 8 people died at the carnival when a tent collapsed.  When the boys walked home from sheesha that night, they saw many cars covered by water except for the top foot.  We braved going through the Gulf-residents-only border and as we drove out of Al Ain, virtually every tree was damaged, roads were flooded, and a tent rental place was in ruins.  Most of the water had no where to go and there were a limited number of pumps available. 

On our way to Dubai, we were in more rain and then it rained when we were on the Palm Island.  This storm seems to be a singular event in Buraimi, for being this far from the coast.  I know there was a cyclone in Muscat in the past decade or so, but we’re at least an hour from the water in any direction.  Some of the roads are still flooded, but the border is now open.  It takes some planning to drive around, but the authorities are quick to act, already having filled a sink hole near our home.