Monday, 10 September 2007

Flooding And Not

As I said I would some time in the far distant past, I am putting up some comparative shots of the river here (the Aare), when it was in flood (in August) and now (when it seems to be lower than normal, but if I don't mention that it will make it all the more dramatic).


(looking upstream towards the footbridge to bird island. Incidentally, that's not the real name of the island, and I'm only putting these captions in to break up the photos in a sensible manner)









(standing on bird island and looking down the river)










(the overflow from the electricity station)

2 comments:

Nick Jensen said...

That's pretty intense. Is the community prepared for this, as in is this an annual "event"? Or did it take everyone by surprise and what about damage?
I would imagine people living close to Aare gets rather moist basements regardless...

rswb said...

You would think that they would be better prepared, but I suspect that individual people aren't really. A few days after the flood I saw a bunch of people who live by the river clearing all the stuff out of their garages and cellars and pumping the water back into the river (then again, maybe the fact that they have pumps means they are prepared and they have done it before). The emergency services people seem more prepared, though, and they have all these excellent little gates that click together and keep water at bay, and are apparently made specifically for the streets of Aarau. I think the damage would have been far more extensive had it not been for the clicky-gates.