Jeziorki's Flood of Floods: today's happenings

If there's one sound that will remind me of the floods, it's that of pumps working overtime to get water out of cellars, garages, gardens and fields. Trouble is, as one man pours it out of his, the stuff invariably goes into someone else's. Below: Trombity 24 (in effect a street with one house number, houses are numbered A through to S). Warszawa powódż Ursynów zielony

Below: The media take interest. TVN Warszawa crew turn up to interview neighbours on ul. Trombity. Beyond the camera, the journalist and a gaggle of locals, the most seriously flooded stretch of our road. Water is flowing from the fields and houses to the right to those on the left.

Below: ul. Kórnicka, looking towards the junction with ul. Trombity. Note the portable toilets on the left, and the sandbags to the right. Fighting a losing battle with water still pouring in from fields on this side of the railway tracks.

Below: Yesterday evening's work by the firemen aided by the railway has had some effect. The sandbags are holding back the bulk of water in the fields to the west of the tracks, but it is still seeping through and flooding ul. Kórnicka. My fixed-wheel bike, mechanical simplicity itself, is proving itself the best possible form of locomotion around flooded Jeziorki.

Below: Cross the fields in the above photo and you'll get to ul. Starzynskiego in Dawidy Bankowe. The road is closed to traffic, because the bridge over the stream has a big hole in it. Buses are being diverted down ul. Baletowa (so no 715s or 809s for Jeziorki for the foreseeable future). There will be MASSIVE traffic jams along Karczunkowska on Monday!

Back to ul. Pozytywki, where the water level has subsided somewhat. Below: I've marked in yellow Thursday night's high water mark. This time, we manage to do a complete lap of the pond through the floodwaters without having to get off our bikes.

Below: The pond, to the right. The water level in the fields to the left beginning to subside. We could not have cycled this way yesterday morning. Puławska is dry. We got electricity back at ten o'clock this morning, 36 hours after it went off.

Life without leccie*

Well, not quite life, but 36 hours. From 21:50 on Thursday, to 09:50 on Saturday. No electricity. So on Thursday night, everyone just went to sleep hoping the morning would bring some relief - not a bit of it. As is evident from previous posts, when the substation and local transformer are both under water, it will take more than a guy with a screwdriver to fix it.

Matches. We need matches. To light candles to illuminate the house. To light the gas to cook food. Fortunately, we have some in the house. Here's the box -

Above and below: Polish-made Black Cat matches. I cannot tell from its website whether Częstochowskie Zakłady Przemysłu Zapalczanego S.A. is state-owned or not, but I strongly suspect so. Look at the groovy website! "Knowing needs of the market we product different types of advertising matches."

What works around the house without mains electricity? Gas cooker (but hot water heater - dependent on electricity). Flushing toilet (fortunately, our septic tank was not flooded). Typewriter and piano. Books. Newspapers. (Fortunately, the days are long and the nights are short.) Cars. Bicycles.

My mobile phone runs out of battery and dies. A wretched nuisance. No possibility of blogging or of uploading photos from my digital cameras - I'm taking so many photos I'm running out of memory. On the street, neighbours are chatting. An unusual sight.

As we enter the 36th hour, the burglar alarm plips back to life, and we have Power.

"Eddie, would you like some breakfast? "

"Not yet thanks - I'd like to enjoy... electricity."

Lot of blogging to do. I've re-ordered the posts in chronological order, as they would have appeared had there been no interruption to the power supply.

* leccie - English working-class slang for electricity. Or 'prond'.

Jeziorki's Flood of Floods - further on down the road; ul. Trombity and ul. Kórnicka

Although the rain ceased long ago, the water level further down our road continues to rise.

Above: The middle section of ul. Trombity, where ul. Nawłocka meets ul. Dumki, is seriously under water. Below: View looking down from the railway embankment towards the junction of ul. Kórnicka and Trombity.Warszawa powódż Ursynów zielony

Below: the source of the ever-rising water. The drainage tunnel under the railway line, letting in vast volumes from the flooded fields on the other side. Water in the ditch in the foregound was surging forward, heading for the wetlands behind me, the lowest point in Jeziorki.

Below: across the tracks, on the Dawidy Bankowe side. The fields are under water as is the track from ul. Baletowa. The guy in the hi-vi jacket is a railway track inspector.

Below: The water washed off the fields, across ul. Kórnicka and rushed on towards the wetland (to Eddie's left). Water will find its own level; block it off here, it will run around a different way.

Below: Just after sunset, a combined team of firemen and railway workers had dammed the tunnel under the railway line. It had been allowing vast amounts of water off the fields on the other side to rush through onto the Trombity side. A decision had been taken to leave the fields across the tracks under water and save the houses on this side from further flooding. Each house on ul. Kórnicka had its own portable toilet placed outside it, as the septic tanks had overflown.

Jeziorki's Flood of Floods: ul. Sarabandy and ul. Karczunkowska

The flooding was widespread across Jeziorki; here's W-wa Jeziorki station (below) and the junction of ul. Gogolińska running off to the left and ul. Karczunkowska. No chance of Park+Ride from here today, the trains were (from what I could see) running normally.

Below: ul. Sarabandy, where the footpath to ul. Trombity (to the left) crosses to meet the one running off to ul. Klarnecistów. The Mercedes Benz Vito has broken down in the thigh-deep water. The driver, having taken left his trousers inside, climbed out of the window with a tow-rope, to be attached to a large baggage taxi he called out as his rescue vehicle. Meanwhile, a śmiałek in a Toyota SUV makes the crossing without a hitch. Very risky; water up the exhaust-pipe kills the engine.

The Iveco baggage taxi hauled the Vito out in seconds. On the shore, the next challenge would be to get its engine restarted. Eddie and I filled our wellies here; we had to take the footpath back home and it was way too deep even for our decent Barbours.

Right: Back home, we need to dry our footwear! About three litres of water in each boot. It's a good thing that Friday afternoon and all of Saturday were sunny; it is as if Dame Nature is trying to atone

We were very lucky; many in Jeziorki still have flooded cellars, fields, gardens; only a few houses (on ul. Kórnicka) had flooded ground floors.Warszawa powódż Ursynów zielony

Jeziorki's Flood of Floods: ul. Puławska and the pond on ul. Pozytywki

On the morning after the Corpus Christi storm, we woke up - still no electricity (it would be off for another 24 hours). Our neighbours inform us that ul. Puławska is impassable; Trombity itself was still open. Time to set off on the first of several expeditions to see the extent of the damage.

Below: A 709 bus heading for Piaseczno. The passengers cannot believe what they are seeing. It has taken this bus well over 90 minutes to get this far (usually this is a 25 minute journey from Wilanowska). On the corner of ul. Karczunkowska was a reporter for TVN Warszawa, who posted this report.

The reason why Puławska was under water was the bursting of the banks of the pond on ul. Pozytywki ('music box street'), just south of ul. Karczunkowska. The pond's normal banks are marked by the row of grass and the tree in the middle of the pic. Looking at the area in Google Earth (with the Terrain box checked), you can see that the pond's elevation is 102m above sea level, while Puławska to the east is a mere 101m. The fields to the east of the pond at at 103m plus. So the water draining off the fields pours into the pond, which overflows, and the water floods down to Puławska.

Below: To give you an idea of the scale of the flooding. Ul. Pozytywki, eight am. This is my fixed wheel bike (incidentally, the very best form of bicycle for such conditions). It has 28" wheels, probably some eight inches showing. So 20 inches (50cm) of water covering the road. I also noticed on a nearby wall that the water had actually fallen by some 4" (10cm) from its highest level, which would have peaked at 60cm (24" or two feet).

Below: 400 metres to the east; Puławska is wall-to-wall with water. The north (city) bound traffic is reduced to one lane, but it is moving. Southbound, things look trickier.Warszawa powódż Ursynów zielony

Left: The retail and office complex close to the corner of Puławska and Karczun-kowska. Note the guard box in the foreground that's just floated away. Further away, just under the Dierre sign is a white box which is the electrical substation for this area. It was submerged to a depth of at least a metre. Below: Pozytywki again, from the Karczunkowska side. The base of the electrical transformer is under water.

Jeziorki's Storm of Storms

I could see it coming - a whopper of a storm. The previous night's storm was mainly electrical; much thunder and lightning, not much rain. As the clouds deepened and darkened, I put the tripod out onto the balcony at the front of the house to catch the storm as it happened.

Below: the storm (nawałnica - 'squall' or 'cloudburst') at its maximum intensity. The Yaris's alarm has been set off by the thunder as it passed overhead. Lightning flash - BOOM! Thunder followed before I could count to one. The wind was ferocious. I have never seen such volumes of water coming down from the heavens, nor accompanied by such winds. Note the water level - up to the top of the Yaris's rear tyre, entirely flooding the front garden.

Below: the storm has passed. It lasted less than two hours. The drive and front garden are under five inches (13 cm) of water. The ground in any case was pretty much waterlogged as a result of May's abnormally high rainfalls following the winter's abnormally high snowfalls.

Soon after the above photo was taken, the lights went out and would remain out for the next 36 hours. The Corpus Christi storm of 2010 will go down in folk memory of Jeziorki's inhabitants, as we shall see from the next post.

Coal trains in June

Just because it's no longer -20C and nights no longer 17 hours long doesn't mean that Warsaw doesn't need prąd and plenty of it. The coal trains that run from W-wa Okęcie sidings to Siekierki power station via Konstancin-Jeziorna sidings are less frequent and less heavily loaded. Two engines provide sufficient motive power to get the full trains to Siekierki.

Above: Looking north from the level crossing on ul. Karczunkowska towards W-wa Dawidy. It looks like quite a dip between the camera's vantage point and where the train is; the difference is only some seven metres. The two engines (ST44-089 and SM48-114) are labouring hard up the modest incline, chucking out more soot than the power station itself.

Above: The train reaches the level crossing. It's moving slowly, to the frustration of motorists at the gates. Worth switching engines off while you wait; this is not 30 seconds at red lights.

Above: Nowa Iwiczna, before the single-track coal line reaches the main line at Nowa Iwiczna station. PCC Rail Coaltrans' TEM2-233 bringing a rake of empty trucks back to W-wa Okęcie.

Hurting and healing - a certain symmetry

After being cooped up at home for three days with a shoulder sprain, at last I felt well enough to go for a walk this evening... Wait a minute - I've written this before... Here.

Back in July 2008, I suffered a partially-severed rotator cuff in my left shoulder. I achieved this by carrying too much weight in my rucksack while cycling, and having the shoulder straps fastened too tight. Then, rather than taking it easy at the first manifestations of pain, I kept on, making two more return journeys to work by bike and ignoring the symptoms until the pain became unsurmountable.

This time, I've done it again, but in the right shoulder. Exactly the same injury, caused exactly the same way. On Friday, I piled in my rucksack a U-bolt lock, a padlock and chain plus waterproof clothing (one of the immutable laws of bicycle security is that the lighter the bike, the heavier the locks needed to prevent its theft). On Saturday morning, I felt as though I'd merely had a bad night's sleep and did not attribute the slight shoulder ache to an overloaded rucksack. So that afternoon, Eddie and I rode down to the airport to see how the roadworks are coming on. Into that same rucksack went the 80-400mm Nikkor, the D80 around my neck with 18-200mm lens. We cycled down ul. Hołubcowa - muddy, bumpy dirt-track. By Sunday morning, the pain was worse. So then I went for the weekly shop, throwing six-packs of 1.5l bottled mineral water around. By Sunday night, the pain was so bad I knew I'd not be in any state to go to work in the morning...

Should I go and see the doctor?

NO.

There's nothing he could tell me that I didn't already know. Give me some useless cream and a one-a-day painkiller like last time? Then direct me for another appointment to get an ultrasound scan? Two (painful) journeys by car, waiting rooms, examinations, queues at the pharmacy?

Time that could be better spent in bed.

That one-a-day painkiller I got in 2008 was fine for the first 20 hours, then, before I could take the next, the pain would get excruciating. This time, I took a maximum dose of paracetamol and lay down until the pain stopped. There were four long periods when my shoulder hurt even when I was not moving; Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon it hurt only when I moved; by Tuesday night I stopped taking painkillers, by this afternoon, I'd have to move it vigorously to feel any pain at all.

I'm letting nature take its course. Last time, the doctor prescribed me another visit "in a week's time" - by when it was all over and fine thank you and not hurting at all. He also prescribed a course of six cryotherapy sessions - I didn't waste my time with this. (Looks like a batch of hokum to me.)

So nature did what it does best; that miraculous feeling of healing, of the body naturally overcoming injury is one to be relished. My left shoulder healed completely - I've not had any twinges or recurrances of the pain in the two years since that injury. The current one, now on the way to recovery, is healing quicker (now I know what to do - simply rest and manage the pain, not tear around from doctor to doctor). And the current injury is, in its own way, a blessing. It balances out the other one. Both shoulders have had exactly the same thing happen to them, and the right one is healing in exactly the same way. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, as Nietzsche said.

I must look at how to avoid this happening again. New rucksuck, broader shoulder straps. Find some way of carrying heavier items directly on the bike (neither my Cannondale, nor my Pete White, nor my Holdsworth have brazed-on lugs for attaching a carrier rack). A large under-saddle bag would be useful; a frame-bag to carry tools, spare inner-tube etc. And leave only light items, such as clothing, to the rucksack. Ideally, however, I should ride without anything on my back.

And what was I doing while not being able to type at 120 wpm? Watching Jonathan Meades on YouTube. Britain's greatest architectural critic and television intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st Century.

In particular: Soviet architecture - Stalin's legacy and British architecture - Victoria's legacy. Each worth 90 minutes of your time to savour.

Thanks to the website of Owen Hatherley for the link to the Meades Shrine on YouTube. This is how ideas spread and take root.

Does Poland have a Jonathan Meades? Probably. Except we shall never know, for there's no Polish BBC on which he or she may shine. Just the drear, tendentious drivel of party-run TVP.

And a propos of British society, this article by Ben Macintyre about the difference between Cameron and Clegg is a gem.