Powerless

Sometimes you are powerless figuratively speaking. And sometimes you are powerless literally. And sometimes, both, because you are powerless to do anything about the fact that you are powerless. I've just gone through one of those times.

Vlorë flooded yesterday afternoon. We had a heavy storm roll in. It wasn't a surprise, the forecasters had said the storm was coming. But the amount of rain in the amount of time, that was a surprise.

About 7 inches of rain fell in three hours. That's a lot of water for the storm drain systems to handle. Maybe they could have made it, but for another problem: The rain fell in the mountains before it reached the city. What happens to water in the mountains? It flows downhill, toward the city.

Albania planned for such events. There are several canals built to take the runoff from the mountains and safely let it flow to Vlorë Bay. But this was so much water so fast, the canals weren't deep enough to contain it all. So the water overflowed the canals into the low-lying streets of Vlorë. Combine that with the rain now reaching the city itself and you have a major flood.

The Morning After

Alrica and I had known the rain was coming, so we were indoors. We didn't see the flooded streets until we went out today. Our apartment is on the second floor (which is two up from the bottom, because here there is a ground floor or a zeroth floor.) So we were in no danger.

But what did affect us was the loss of electricity. Power went out in a huge portion of Vlorë, including the part of town where we live. We went about 18 hours without power. It makes you appreciate our ancestors inventing fire, because there was little to do and no good way to see once the sun went down.

We are actually pretty lucky. It wasn't so hot that we needed air conditioning, it wasn't so cold that we needed heat. Most anything we had in the refrigerator could get warm and then cold again without much concern. (Except the milk, but one can buy new milk.) I did have to cancel a meeting with a student, and Alrica had to cancel one meeting too. But all in all, it could have been a lot worse timing.

So we were powerless, literally. And part of the frustration was that we had no way of checking on anything. When would the power be on? What was happening in Vlorë? When you are cut off from information (and much of it isn't in a language you know anyway) you feel a bit like you're hung out to dry (like many things were today, trying to recover from yesterday.)

This morning, still without power, and not knowing when we would have it again, Alrica and I set out to find what was going on, what was open, and where we might at least recharge some devices. The area near the bay seemed the worst, power out and flooded roads. But as we moved away from the water we found much of Vlorë had power, businesses were open and busy, and a lot of cleanup was going on. Those poor business owners also felt pretty powerless.

I saw this van with garlic in the dashboard.
Maybe the driver doesn't want to be powerless against vampires.

We learned that about 55 families had to be evacuated in the city. The Albanian Army sent powerboats and pump trucks to work on clearing the streets. And there is mud everywhere. So it was pretty serious and if all I suffered was a night without lights, entertainment, or information, I didn't really suffer at all. And that was just luck, not because of any actions I took. Nothing of my doing.

I guess in the face of nature's fury, we're all a little bit powerless.