Fancy a flood?

Over the last night it rained all night long, with frequent storms in between. Rain, thunder, rain, and rain again. I barely slept because of all of this.

This morning I woke up, went downstairs. I saw the message from the flat mates asking me to keep an eye on the small river. I opened the window and saw the swimming pool on the brink of flooding. My brain just told me at that moment "Good morning sunshine!". I forgot, though, that two sides of the propriety have a stream running through. That one grew much more than the swimming pool. Our landlord cleans it regularly, but the neighbor where it heads next does not. This creates a bottleneck. The other neighbors, luckily, have cut the grass and cleaned their gardens as well over the last two weeks. This has, for sure, reduced considerably the amount of debris.

Overflown stream

Our house has either the walls of the house itself or some small walls to make it a bit higher and prevent flooding. The only issue is that within these walls we have the swimming pool, which may enter directly in the house if it overflows. How weird that the pool went from a precious asset, just yesterday, to a huge threat. 😓

Our room is the only one on the first floor, so very much safe. The other 4 bedrooms, the kitchen, and the living room, are on the ground floor. These may all be threatened by the swimming pool. Let's see how it turns out.

I started to plan the possible actions to take if a flood takes place. I checked the loose bricks on the ground: this explains why the washing machine is on four bricks. I did not think about it. "Alright, if water flows in what shall I do first? Maybe cut the electricity. Yes, definitely. Hold on, where is the control panel?"

At 10:15 AM the rain has stopped for around ten minutes: I managed to catch my breath. Unfortunately, it started back again with quite some good rhythm but nothing like the whole night and the early morning. Hopefully this situation holds on and gives time to water to flow away into the ocean. Back to paranoia mode! 🥳

The bottleneck

We do have floods, more and more frequently, in the area of Italy I grew up. This is not something new, but I have never experienced it in first person. In twenty years in Italy, I have never had a flood in my house. It is also true that most of the apartments I have lived in, they were on the first floor or higher.

Updates will follow. Maybe in the company of Poseidon. 🐠

Did you ever have to live through a flood? What do you remember the most? Feel free to share this in the comment section here below! 😉

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