Looking for a light: Perth's Great Storm

Friday, March 26, 2010

Perth's Great Storm

It started off like any normal day, I reached school in the morning for a meeting as well as Advanced Psych class, but my mind was slightly on edge cos of the Data Analysis Mid-term I had later on in the day. The weather was fine, even slightly hot, an it was the last thing on my mind. Also, Monday is my rest day, so I don't really think about the weather cos I know I wasn't gonna go out and run or whatever.

Anyways, the DA exam started at about 4pm, and I went into the comp lab, ok lar relaxing, I saw the questions, was a bit nervous but I knew what I was doing and started the paper pretty smoothly. About 1/4 way through, I heard a thump in the ceiling. Now at this time, I heard the win howling outside, so I figured it must be something like flapping against the ceiling or the wall. Then I hear more and more thumps and in about 10 minutes it turned into a complete riot! It was really noisy but I just kept telling myself that it was probably something knocking against something else cos of the win and nothing else. I mean being in Perth has been eye-opening in terms of how ferocious the wind can be, but other than that it was no surprise.

Then the door to the comp lab opened slightly an the prof was asked to go out. Again I din pay any attention to it, I was really focused on the exam, and then he told us we had to evacuate the building. Now this was the first inkling I had that it was something more major than I thought, but again, I just dismissed it as like a safety precaution. Having been raised in Singapore, we are used to the concept of being Kiasi, so it was nothing to me.

Then as I walked out the door, it struck me. The front of the school courtyard was covered, absolutely covered with branches and leaves. The open field beside the school was white, with hail stones. I was damn shocked, never seen hail stones that big before!

I went back inside school and grabbed my bag to go out and leave, hahaha little did i know this was just the start of the whole thing. I met my friend Ali, who lived close to school, and his car was half buried in water. But he told me to hurry home cos another storm was coming. Rushed to the bus stop outside school and you could really sense things were gonna pick up again. Rained like shit, and I was drenched despite having an umbrella. Couldnt even go use the underpass cos it was flooded knee deep in like cold icy water. Absolutely incongruent this whole thing was, so jay walked and waited for the bus.

My bus trip takes about 11 minutes, but we were stuck inside the bus for 1hour 10 minutes. Everywhere around me, I saw cars on kerbs, trees fallen down, flooded driveways with cars under about a meter of water. Traffic lights all down. It was absolute chaos. Inside the bus, it was different though, cos all the uni students were inside so many of them were talking cock, and I just listened in. But the bus driver was an idiot! First, he didn't turn off the aircon despite ppl shouting at him to, cos I mean we were all wet, so naturally the last thing u need was air con. Secondly, he refused to open the doors until he was right in front of the freaking stop! WTF!!! And I mean when your stuck in traffic, 10m could take 5 minutes.

Crap, anyways I called Colby, and he agreed to fetch me, which was awesome of him, cos when we reached home......

about 1/2 the house was soaked in water, even though we lived on the 3rd floor. Cos we have a skylight in the toilet, and obviously it broke with the pressure of the hail stones. Water also came directly into Colby's room, and his whole room was a mess, soaked in water. The Balcony doors also sustained damaged and water came in. Still I am eternally grateful to Colby for abandoning his salvage efforts so he could take me home from the bus stop, which was about ten min walk from home.

Anyways, all in all, wat a day dat was seriously. Never seen anything like it, and I spoke to a lot of locals about it they havent seen something like dat for like 20 years.Even then what shocked everybody was the freakish nature of it! It just came without warning.

Now about 4 days later, the underpass is still flooded, as the water will probably take about another 2 weeks to completely evaporate on its own. Most ppl's cars look like golf balls with dimples and such, and the UWA winthrop building, the centrepiece of our university's architecture sustained millions of dollars in damage cos the windows were gone. Smashed. The greenhouses all smashed. Arts library flooded. Landslides also caused some houses to be almost buried in mud, and hundreds of thousands of homes were without power, some still don't have power cos of the lightning striking power stations. in Altogether I think they said the damage is in the hundreds of millions. And the insurance claims will only be sorted out completely 2 years from now, that's how long a claims list it is.

Just grateful that things are back to normal, and dat we don't have to fork out any money. The house is still a mess now as Colby's room is still drying out (4 days later). But yeah its ok. Thanks to ah beng, uni, ben leo for asking me how i was. I am just glad im safe, and more importantly there were zero casualties. Here are some photos for you guys.