Sunday 6 June 2010

From the dried-up suburb...

After the terrible downpour that caused numerous ponds and brooks to wreak havoc in the neighbourhood we have enjoyed three days of sunshine and warmth. The weather has been conducive to the ground which could absorb more water. Yesterday I didn’t go out anywhere, as every decent PO-voter I just had a barbecue and gobbled up grilled sausages as the fire engines were pumping the water out of flooded gardens. Today I cycled to see the scale of destruction in the southern suburbs of Warsaw…

Here’s the most awful aftermath of the severe rainfalls. The wall of this not that new building collapsed. I don’t know when exactly, but last weekend it was unspoilt and on Friday it looked like this. My version of event is that the land beneath the building slid, foundations sagged and the wall collapsed… Note that the building was put up some forty years ago and for four decades nothing comparable to the Corpus Christi downpour happened. Yes, I know, I should have stopped a bike and then snap. That’s why it’s blurred.

One of many “ponds” in Nowa Wola, I counted around a dozen of similar XXL-puddles. Still one can see there many hoses piping out waters from garages, basements and gardens. Fortunately I saw only one household where the water must have got inside and furniture were put out and drying on a backyard.

I didn’t notice any damages caused by water in Zgorzała, but in Jeziorki things look worse (at first sight and three days after the actual flooding). Here you can see another “temporary lake”, across the tracks, beyond ul. Gogolińska.

A more comprehensive report from this area can be found on W-wa Jeziorki blog – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. One of the pictures, taken from the platform of W-wa Jeziorki station shows the same Skoda Favorit, waterlogged. I wonder if the engine of hapless car kicks in.

To the right – culprit of flooding on ul. Puławska on Friday morning – an inconspicuous pond on ul. Pozytywki. Who’d suppose its waters could spill over…? Today ul. Pozytywki is passable, I noticed some houses had been underwater as their dwellers put out some of their belongings…

Ul. Puławska is entirely dry. The green cult Tico is still there. On TVN Warszawa I saw a post of a guy who claimed to be the owner of that car. I doesn’t look like a vehicle whose engine wouldn’t start right away… I wanted to photograph the marks of water level in green office building, but a security guard threatened to take away my camera and I had to dash off without snapping the building.

Pond in Mysiadło still floods the area around, but the water on the pavement was shallow enough to cycle through it. What’s going to happen next? Forecasters are issuing warnings against new storms and heavy rainfalls from tomorrow on. Plus we are quite likely to face another disaster, unbearable heat – the temperature in Warsaw may reach +32C on Friday. Needless to say such weather is very conducive to formation of storm clouds…

2 comments:

Michael Dembinski said...

Bartek - under what law passed by the Polish parliament does a security guard have the right to deny you, a local citizen, from taking a photograph (assuming of course you were standing on public land?) My reaction in such circumstances is to ask said security guard this question, and (knowing he cannot satisfactorily answer it), carry on and take the pics FOR THE BENEFIT OF POSTERITY.

I feel like going there RIGHT NOW and getting that snap!

student SGH said...

I have no idea if it is forbidden, probably not. And if had taken the camera away he'd've exceeded the scope of his powers.

I don't know whose land was that, I was three to four metres away from his box.

But there's another facet - I wouldn't like somebody, including you to come and take photos if my house was flooded and I was trying to clean the site up. It's the respect for someone else's privacy that prevented me from taking that photo, maybe if there had been nobody inside I wouldn't have had inhibitions. But go ahead, you have it nearer, maybe the security guard hasn't finished his shift yet - I was there around 10:50...

Maybe my approach to photography as documenting present events is different than yours. Other people's privacy is in my books set above my own desire to snap. My method is simple - I try to imagine myself in the shoes of people who would appear on my photo and ask myself whether I'd like to be captured. And I do admit I usually give up...