Tag Archives: prague flood 2013

We are refugees, sort of.

I didn’t think we would have to leave, although Helena was quite concerned, and seemed a bit pissed off at me that I took off for my  poetry reading at 7.  “I’ve got my phone with me.  If you have to leave, put the kids in the car and head over to Bill’s.  But, I don’t think anything’s going to happen.”

Some Prague residents aren’t bothered at all

The poetry reading was small, about half the number that usually turn up, probably even less, and the featured poet wasn’t there, I suppose all that was weather related, and we had it in the back room of the bar because the basement was, in fact, flooded.  Anyway, since the featured reader didn’t show, we had a really short program and it actually was pretty good.  A couple of Ken Nash songs, a new guy with a short story about some Polynesian succubus type mythological creature called a kovea, I’m not at all sure I’m spelling that right, Siegfried Mortkowitz with a series of poems all starting with the line “When I woke up today…,” and a couple of others.

A short program, but a good one.  Nobody was terrible.

So, I was out of there at 9 and looking forward to getting home and saying “See, I told you there was nothing to worry  about.”

I called from the tram stop at Malostranske Namesti to say I was on my way and she answered the phone with a cheerful “I’ve got the kids in the car and we’re going to Bill’s, so meet us there I can’t talk now I’m driving,” and that was the end of that conversation.  I put the phone back in my  pocket and then realized I had no idea how to get to Bill’s place from where I was.

I’d been there a couple of times before but never paid too much attention to where we were relative to anything else.  So, after a couple of moments of disorientation, I  called him.  “Good luck,” he said.  With the Metro down, he didn’t actually know how to get there, either.  But we talked for a couple of minutes, I sort of got my bearings, and I actually arrived almost exactly at the same time as my wife.

The trams and the extra buses and most people not going anywhere are compensating for the Metro being mostly down, and the city  is functioning very well.  Sometime tomorrow, we’ll head back over and see if the neighborhood is actually flooded or if we can get back into  our house, but it wouldn’t be entirely disastrous if we couldn’t.

She packed for about a month.

Hooboy, the river is rising and everybody is recalling the flood of ’02, which was a megamess.  Reports started to filter in around  noon, there were a couple of people posted pictures of high water on my facebook page, then we went out to lunch at the Chinese because Sam just got back from nature school this morning.

On the way  to the restaurant, it was pouring down, I was regretting the decision to leave the house, but  it was only rain,  and when  I am surrounded by rain I generally think “fucking rain,” I don’t automatically think “Oh, Dear, it is likely to flood and that will cause us major problems which we should start thinking about.”  Even though it’s been raining  for a week now, and we should have realized something  like this  was coming.

It  wasn’t even raining on the way home, though, just the secondary rain of water falling from the leaves, it’s been like that, off and on.  We got  home and Sam went to play at a friend’s house and Helena and Isabel walked up to Libensky Most for a firsthand view and to take a few pics.

Then, they announced on the news that a few Metro stations would be closed, specifically ours, and then several people posted maps of the Metro closures on facebook and it’s basically the whole  system, at least all of it that’s any good to me.

Then they announced that schools might be closed.  Then they announced that they wouldn’t.  Then they announced that they  would and the kids went to bed happy.  They’ve made a couple of changes in plan since then, but we’re letting them stay home.

We haven’t evacuated yet, but we’ve called a friend  and made arrangements so he won’t be totally shocked when  a family of four shows up in his flat  in the middle of the night.  I don’t think it’s going to come to that, though.

I look down from my balcony and the streets are slick, sure, just like after a strong  rain, but there’s no flood yet. (As the crow flies, we’re maybe about a half kilometer from the river, about a quarter mile.)  So far, it’s  not as bad as 2002 and I don’t think it will  be.

But we won’t be able to say that for sure until it’s over.