Flood

Tuesday of last week, Laurel and I woke up to the sound of our frightened neighbor frantically banging on our door to wake us up while trying to explain that the water was rising. Because he was speaking really fast and muffled by our window, and because I was barely awake, I didn’t really understand what he was saying. So, assuming he might just be drunk and locked out, I got dressed while cursing him under my breath. When I got outside I realized something wasn’t right. My neighbor, Omar and his wife and little girl were packing a bag and pointing to the river. It was getting pretty high.

Now, none of our other neighbors were panicking but I thought I should at least try to empathize with the guy instead of being annoyed at having been woken from a comfortable sleep (when it rains the temperature drops nicely). The reason no one else was worried is because we happen to live about twelve feet above the road, which was still a good three feet above the water level. Usually the road is a good twenty feet above the water level. So in reality we had nothing to worry about.

But moments later the water jumped over the retaining wall a little further down the road toward the riverfront area. A shallow pool of water started to back up toward our building, settling under Omar’s truck parked outside. It finally occurred to me that if it gets any higher, the problem won’t be that the water will flood our place (that would have been nearly impossible), the problem would have been that we wouldn’t be able to get out while the flood was happening. The only way to higher ground was along that same road and up stairs to the main road above us. There may have been some urgency to get moving but hardly life and death as far as we were concerned. Omar was just worried about his truck.

view of flooding on our street, nearly 12 meters above normal water levels, taken around 3 am. you can just make out omar's truck.

So, Laurel and I packed some valuables and a change of clothes and we went outside to wait with our other neighbors, Wolf and Franka (the German couple we work with). From the road you could clearly see that the riverfront park and street were now part of the river. They are only five or six feet below us but the direction of the river affected that path more than anything. We decided we would wait at higher ground until the river went back down. It was about 3:30 am at this point and the whole ordeal had the feel of a little adventure.

A few minutes after locking up the apartment, while waiting outside Wolf and Franka’s house with their kids Maya and Paula, we saw a large object floating down the river. Yup, that was a house. A little earlier we thought was saw some furniture go by, so I guess that made sense. The river was dark but you could definitely make it out. The problem was that there’s a wooden bridge a little down river from us that connects the riverfront to the zoo island across the way. The river was high enough to ensure a collision. When it struck, it made a ghastly crunching noise and created a bit of a dam that forced some more water to back up our road. Omar and family had already left but I had the feeling his truck was about to be flooded. Then, another house came floating by. This one was even bigger and the bridge was no match. The three or four inch thick steel cables that held the bridge up from the concrete bases on either side would certainly hold but the concrete didn’t. The bridge collapsed into the flood along with the two houses and floated away.
remains of the bridge

where the bridge used to be

The water was still getting higher so we all walked up to the main road. Laurel and I checked some other access points from above. We could see that the riverfront was under about six feet of water and starting to run through town and the main road at its lowest point, flooding businesses, homes and the bank.

photo taken around 3:20 am at the main intersection

Wolf and Franka decided it would be best to wait out the storm at a friend’s house because their little girls were cranky and getting wet. Laurel and I joined them. A short walk through the rain to catch a cab allowed us to see that other parts of the city were under water.
The flood may be worse than we think, we thought looking down on an entire neighborhood underwater. On one of the hills overlooking the city, up a rain carved and mud bogged road, was Jentz’ place. Jentz is another German living in Tena who runs his own tourism and adventure guide company with his Kichwa wife. Until the sun came up, we sat around in newly dried clothes occasionally looking down at the city, trying to make out where the water was flowing.

By six o’clock the sky was bright enough to see so we headed back to town. Jentz’ dirt road had deteriorated further during the night. When we got to the riverfront the water had dropped at least ten feet. Things seemed safe but everything was a mess.
Mud covered the path where the river had jumped over the wall. Restaurants were upturned and caked with slimy brown. The businesses further down the road were in even worse shape.

One bar in particular toppled over completely. At least Omar’s truck was fine.

By seven o’clock scores of people were helping clear the mess. The bricks from the road were ripped up in some areas and rubber boots were a requirement. People even set up assembly lines to clean off each of the water-logged products found scattered about from the hardware store.

Our neighbor, Lisbeth, has a restaurant called Café Tortuga that was full of friends and neighbors who had come to lend a hand: carrying things out, mopping up the mud and salvaging produce (it was amazing how many eggs survived).
amazing eggs!

One great thing was the actions of the people affiliated with our favorite bar. Araña was actually open until about one o’clock the morning of the flood, so they could see the water rising. This is actually the lowest lying structure on the riverfront and they get flooded often enough to know the drill. (Just a month earlier they had flooded as well, though not to the same extent.) Before we left for higher ground earlier that morning we could actually see that the whole bar was submerged with up to ten feet of water. But while the water was slowly rising just before the flood, phone calls were made and people came out to lift everything not nailed down to higher ground. Refrigerators and other heavy furniture were carried up a narrow hallway to the driveway above.
Most amazing was that the structure survived completely intact. It was Tuesday morning and by Friday night they would be back open for business (yeah, yeah, I know because I was there).

It’s been a week now and most of the damage done in town that was salvageable is nearly back to normal. Café Tortuga should be open for business any day now (all Lisbeth’s refrigerators survived the flood, believe it or not).

There’s still a lot of mud on the roads and walkways because it’s been raining seemingly non-stop since then, but it was impressive to see how quickly the community rallied to help one another.

After the dust settled, and the Mayor did all his public speeches, we heard that two people lost their lives in Archidona (a town downriver) and nearly every community nearby had a few homes were lost or damaged beyond repair. In happier news, our friend the tapir who lives at the zoo across the river was spotted 2 days ago and we saw the monkeys out and about on Sunday evening, a good sign that not all of the animals were washed away.

People have been telling us that there hasn’t been a flood this bad in Tena for forty years. We’ve heard reports that other areas have had record floods throughout the Amazon region, wreaking havoc in the form of mudslides (especially in Brazil). For us it was simply an experience that teaches the power of nature’s sometimes destructive whims.