Last weekend our closest town was turned into a disaster zone with flooding. It was quite a shock really even though we'd had a lot of rain our town usually only floods from the river but this year we had a lot of surface flooding too which made things a lot worse. This was the worst flood I have experienced in the 10 years that I have lived here and they reckon it is the second worst in the last 50 years.
To make matter worse for me, I had been staying away from home pet/house sitting. A lot of the main roads got closed due to slips and surface flooding and the owner of the dogs I was looking after couldn't make it home. I had been booked to stay for 2 nights but ended up staying 4!
By Sunday the entire town was on lock down. There were literally no safe routes in or out of the city and all of the bridges over our main river were closed to traffic. We were an island. I got stuck on the wrong side from home so had to spend the day, somewhat lost, at my boyfriends house.
This might have been fun except that he is a rural fire officer and had been drafted in to help save the town, he worked 56 hours in three days! So I spent the day at his house alone, tidying up and stoking the fire in the coal range that he never uses. I on the other hand have fallen in love with it and could almost tolerate living at his house if I got to play with that stove every day. I need one in my future house!
After another night spent away from home I was very keen to get back and set off before true light. One bridge had been opened and two routes were now available out of the city so I headed for home with Rush in tow as it felt mean to leave him behind when his master didn't know when he would be home. Later in the day we headed back to town to asses the damage to the places where we work. A lot of the lawns and gardens will have to be left for a long time to recover so we will have to tighten our belts for a while.
The next morning there was a record low temperature in New Zealand of -20c! Luckily it wasn't where we live but it still felt cool enough here at 0c. We had a good frost all round so had to wrap up warm before we left the house. We managed to do a few jobs in town before heading home to sit by the fire again. There had been reports during the day of a radar fault that had grounded all flights across NZ which is apparently a very rare event and then at 10pm, just as we were thinking of going to bed, a big boom sounded through the house. We thought something must have hit the house wall although we had no idea what. We went out to look and the neighbours were checking their house too. Turns out the boom had been heard as far away as Waitotara (1 hour drive north) and possibly Wellington (2 hours drive south). Theres still no explanation as to what it was. Some kind of explosion or possibly a meteorite seem to be the most popular theories so far. Hopefully an answer will be found.
Glad your comp worked enough to post- and you have the electricity for it! Sounds like some crazy things have been going on, can't say there is a dull moment in NZ ;p It will be very interesting to find out what the boom was- let us know!
ReplyDeleteDad says very interesting too x3