Monsoon Season
The rainy season lasts the whole month of July and sometimes into August. We’re been getting quite a bit of rain, at least one day a week. Lately it’s been like three times a week. Yesterday it rained all day long. It didn’t feel like that much rain, but the Tancheon (the river near our apartment) flooded… A lot.
This morning, we rode our bikes to work (which is what we try to do when the weather’s nice). Our commute to work is a 30 minute ride along the Tancheon. There are bike lanes, walking paths, green space, outdoor exercise equipment, fountains, golf course, even a really nice outdoor swimming pool for children, all of which flank the river.
Every morning we cycle down a ramp to get to the bike lane, but this morning, it was closed off with yellow tape. We looked down and saw some branches on the ramp, but figured we could make it down safely. We saw no reason to be concerned, and noticed other people were biking and walking by the river. So we headed down.
Along the path, I noticed some street lamps were down and had long grasses wrapped around the bottoms and bricks were scattered around. I thought, hmm, maybe they’re doing construction work and tore the lamps up from the ground. Strange. Then we noticed the small foot bridge we normally cross was completely wrapped in long grasses and the bridge’s railings had fallen down.
As we turned around and headed for a sturdier bridge, it still didn’t register in my mind what had happened. I thought maybe the winds were really strong. Finally, as I noticed more grasses snaked around the bottom of every lamp post, around trees, debris scattered about, and grass and trees folded over in the direction of the river’s current, I said to Cory, “Wow, the tancheon flooded!” Until then, he hadn’t thought of it either.
We continued on our way. Men and women were already out cleaning up some of the damage. Pavement was torn up, patches of grass were rolled like a carpet, branches, grasses, trash, stones, bricks were scattered around. The worst was when we rode past the children’s swimming pool. Men were cleaning away mud and debri and so much of the pool was broken. And when we rode past the golf course, a lot of the grass was ripped up, rocks exposed, and the nearby volleyball court was no more.
I noticed some long grasses tangled in some metal bars underneath the overpass (where cars drive). The measurement said that was about 4.0 meters, which equates to about 13 feet! I’m assuming the water got that high to tangle the grass up there, but that’s just unimaginable. I wish we would have known about the flood and could have gone and looked down at the water. Even when we rode up through the tunnel to get up to the street near school, it was caked in thick mud, and it was clear the water had been lapping almost to the street. I’m always in awe of water and its power.
So much damage to repair, but when we were riding home from work, so much had been cleaned up already. I wonder how quickly everything will be rebuilt and pristine. Korean construction seems to go really fast. One day a restaurant will be in business, the next day it will be gutted, and by the following day there’s a new one in its place. Riding along the tancheon reminded me of Hurricane Katrina and how slow the reaction to clean up was. So far, Koreans have been a lot quicker to respond (on a much smaller scale of course). We’ll see what happens, it’s looking like a storm tonight, and we’re supposed to get rain all day tomorrow.
We’ll try and take some pictures depending on weather and how prompt the clean up is. This is a picture of the Tancheon from another area, not on our commute, but it gives a similar image.
