Friends of mine in Oman have sent an account of the devastation caused last week by tropical cyclone Gonu.<\/p>\n
\n“As some of you may have heard, depending on your news coverage, Oman was hit
\nby tropical cyclone Gonu last Wednesday. The eye of the storm was out at
\nsea, but the edge of it hit landfall at Sur and all the way up the coast to
\nMuscat. It is fair to say, it has caused terrific damage to this beautiful
\ncity.
\nWe were warned of the storm, and made preparations and the actual cyclone
\nwas actually less in strength than predicted, but I don’t think any of us
\nwere prepared for the effects.
\nIn the early hours of Wednesday morning the rain started and persisted all
\nday. We had waterfalls down the stairs as usual and through the air
\nconditioners all night. In the afternoon the wind blew up and it was soon
\ndangerous to go outside with the breaking branches, falling trees, lampposts
\nand telegraph poles. As night fell, like many other places, we lost power,
\nbut from our upstairs windows we could see that the water in the wadi near
\nour house was rising and nearly up to the road. It broke through not long
\nafter and started flowing between the flats one row in from our street. We
\nmoved precious stuff higher up in the house and filled bags with compost and
\nrubbish to ‘sandbag’ the gates. Next we saw the water flowing into our
\nstreet and start the relentless climb up towards our gate. Stuff came
\nfloating past. It was very eerie and disconcerting. We had no idea how
\nlong it would go on for. Then a miracle happened. It started receding and
\nby the time we decided it was safe to go to bed, you could just see the
\nwhite lines in the road again.
\nWe were among the lucky ones. That night many people lost their homes,
\ntheir livelihoods, their cars and, worst of all, their lives. The death
\ntoll has not been published. Official figures here said 25 and 45 missing,
\nbut those who work in hospitals say it must be far higher than that. Ghubra
\nwas worst hit in the Muscat area. Colleagues of mine who lived there had to
\nescape to the first floor as a huge wave engulfed the whole area, stove in
\ntheir doors and flooded their houses to chest level. Although everyone has
\nrallied round, there has been and still is the daunting task of trying to
\nget the mud off what can be salvaged, mud that is contaminated with
\neverything that the water carried with it. And all of that without a water
\nsupply in many cases.
\nOne week from that day, the clean-up operations are still hardly making an
\nimpact. Many parts of the city now have power again. We were only off for
\n20 hours, but some parts, 4 or 5 days and some are still out. We got a tank
\nof water for the first time last night. Until then, we were relying on
\nfilling cans and buckets from the army tankers that have been coming round.
\nI can tell you, collecting water from A.C.s to flush toilets really does
\nmake you realise how environmentally unfriendly toilets are! The outlying
\nvillages and small towns south of here are still in a deplorable state and
\nemergency supplies are being sent out to them.
\nFor those of you who know and love Muscat, you would be devastated to see it
\nnow. Qurm Heights highway bridge was destroyed as much of the corniche near
\nthe Crown Plaza (Starbucks is now an island!) and McDonalds at CCC was
\nunderwater to its roof. BHS and all the shops around there are boarded up
\nfollowing looting and surrounded today by piles of rotting rubbish and heaps
\nof mud. There is still water in the some of the wadis and houses near the
\nstart of the beach highway in Azaibah are still in the middle of a lake.
\nThere is a swamp near the airport. Everywhere there are the wrecks of cars
\nwashed away and now abandoned as insurance does not cover flood damage.
\nRoads everywhere are covered in ridged, baked mud as temperatures have shot
\nback up with a vengeance to 40 to 45. It is a cruel fate given the teams of
\npeople trying to clear up in the heat and the fact that everything is baking
\nsolid. Roads away from the main highway are impassable in places and there
\nare large holes at the edges. Driving at night is hazardous given the
\ndamage, the huge clouds of dust and patchy street lighting. The corniche
\nnear us was destroyed in places and looks as if a large sea monster has been
\ntaking bites out of it.
\nAlthough Al Fair in MQ looked almost normal yesterday, supermarkets near us
\nare still out of action: Markaz Al Bahja is closed and all the little
\nsupermarkets on our slip road. People have lost so much.
\nNeedless to say, school was closed all week, but they managed to get it
\nfunctional to have students and staff in yesterday for a final farewell. We
\nshould have broken up today but… It was the sort of normality everyone
\nneeded and was well worth doing.
\nTomorrow the boys fly back to UK. We decided it was better for them given
\nthe lack of water and the fact that the usual sorts of things we do are not
\nall possible at the moment. They have had to pack up their rooms though as
\nthey will not return to this house. We will move in the next week or so.
\nSo, all in all, it has been a strange week. We can only really say, “Thank
\nGod!” as we came off comparatively lightly.
\nIf you want to see some of the pictures people took and are taking, go to
\nYouTube and Facebook and type in Gonu.
\nSigning off from dry, dusty, dirty, devastated Muscat.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friends of mine in Oman have sent an account of the devastation caused last week by tropical cyclone Gonu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}