just before the 4 horsemen with 13 horns bearing 6 lanterns...

Last weekend we had a massive hail storm of apocalyptic proportions.  In the hour it lasted we got hail the size of golf balls and 3 centimetres of rain.  Kara and I were sitting at one of our newest cafe favorite (St. Ali) when we heard "ping....ping-ping" as we heard some hail start to come down.  I jokingly gave Kara a hard time for thinking it was going to be sunny and leaving the umbrella behind and made a sarcastic remark about golfball-sized hailstones which I later regretted.  Sitting in the covered outdoor seating the downpour suddenly turned extremely intense and we watched a small alley turn into a raging river.  the scene was literally a flashflood comparable to the one on the universal studios tram lot tour.

pretty soon we realized the windows to our apartment were open, and headed out into the rain as soon as it started to let up a bit.  heading back, we were wading knee deep through rivers that used to be streets.  all along the road were cars that had been abandoned with water up to the headlights.  it seriously looked like a disaster had just struck, and people were wading through ice water with their shoes in hand.

Arriving back at our apartment, we found all of our neighbors standing outside.  Our next door neighbor found me and told me, "the ceilings have all come down, there's water everywhere!"  We were told that the lights had come down from the ceiling with exposed cabling and the fire brigade and emergency numbers were not responding.  We kept thinking about our laptops that were sitting around, our bed that is just two inches off the floor, and extension cords lying on the ground.  knowing that my passport and computer were upstairs, it was worth climbing 7 flights of stairs to the top floor to at least have a look and see how feasible it was to get in the apartment.  it was definitely a very scary site when i got up to the top...there was literally water running down the walls, all the light fixtures were hanging at eye level, and the emergency evacuation warning was repeating itself from loud speakers.  here is the view from the hall a few hours after we first got there:

When i opened the door to our unit i was expecting the same destruction to continue inside but was extremely relieved to find it looking like it would on any other day.  i frantically turned off all the computers, packed them in my back, picked up a few valuables and rushed down stairs.  our apartment turned up on the news that evening, and if you look very carefully you can see kara sitting in the lobby with myself sitting behind her in a white tshirt.  all the people standing outside are neighbors on our floor.



since then, we've moved back into our apartment, and everything is generally back to normal...except for our hallways that still smell of week old wet carpet and with a ceiling we can see sunlight through, all this lit by two shop lights set up at either end of the hall.  lame but not too bad :)

photo of our street from tim's apartment:

the news story in "the age"