THE FLOOD

THE FLOOD


January 31 1995

Well, now I know how Noah felt.  When I wrote my last letter to you in the middle of the afternoon of January 31, I said that there was a deluge outside.  There was, and it did not stop but continued all night long.  In the middle of the night one of the watchmen came to waken us because some of the workers who live in cabins in the grounds of the dairy were marooned (basically because he, the watchman, had been asleep on the job and when he woke up the water was already high).  The river had risen by about 3m. and the cabins were now virtually in the middle of the water where the current was extremely strong.  Trees were rushing past at about 60m.p.h. (and that is NO exaggeration). The cabin where the vet stays  (Fortunately he was not in it at the time because he had gone to Santa Cruz) went sailing off down the river.  Since we have no boat or anything (Robert asked for a Zodiac and ouboard motor a year ago and nobody paid any attention), we got a couple of inner tubes from the tyres of one of the lorries and two of the workers who are strong swimmers swam across with them with a cable attached which was being held by Robert, Caruso (the Argentinian), the night watchman and a couple of others who pitched up.  They managed to reach the old carpentry above which lived two workers, one with his wife and a 10 day old baby.  From there they managed to get across to another cabin next to the one which had just been washed away and bring Gonzalo over to the carpentry shop.  

By then it was clear that with the inner tubes it would be impossible to evacuate the mother  and baby because the current was too strong and it would be too difficult - if not impossible - for the people to hold them.  What to do?  We got some stronger cable which they took across and tied to one of the wooden pillars of the carpentry and the other end we tied to a tree.  Things were getting pretty desperate because the water had risen another metre and a half and Robert was afraid that if one of these tree "torpedoes" were to hit the fragile structure again the whole carpentry would collapse and then there would be no chance of saving any of them.  The father was  too shocked to take the responsibility of bringing the baby across. Gonzalo and Milton were not good enough swimmers to be able to carry the baby, hold on to the cable and at the same time propel themselves across, and the mother was definitely not able to do that.  So, I asked one of the strong swimmers if he felt he could do it and he agreed, although it was a big responsibility because, if anything went wrong, I am sure he would always feel that he was to blame.  The other good swimmer was out of commission because he had been battered against a tree and his hand was injured.

It was a hard job to convince the mother to let go of the baby, but eventually it was wrapped up in a bit of plastic and then in a blanket and placed on the nape of this chap´s neck and the blanket firmly tied around him.  He jumped into the water and, holding on to the cable, came hand-crossing across the river with Robert and the others up to their necks in water pulling and hauling on this side.  I had dry things on this bank to wrap the baby in although they did not stay dry for long with the torrents of water that were falling.  The baby did not bat an eyelid!  When the mother saw that the baby was safe and sound on this side she came across too and then all the others followed, just in time to see two of the walls of the carpentry collapse.  They were going to call the baby Israel but Robert said they should call it Moisés.  Moisés it is going to be.


All the cabins will have to be dismantled and what can be salvaged will be used to build new ones on higher ground.  In fact nobody should ever have built anything down there because it is clearly part of the river bed when the river is in flood.  People say that when the Swedish missionary was building down there they told him this but his reply was "God is on my side".  What a cretin!  All the trees have been washed away too and now that the waters have subsided there is about 2m. of mud everywhere, including inside the electricity house which was full of water.

That was another worry, so all the electricity had to be shut off in case everything went up in smoke.  Now Robert says that he wants all that equipment transferred up to relatively safer higher ground.  Not a single soul from the UN called to find out if we were all right or anything.  Not a cheep.  Luckily the telephone to the house is still working because the wires come up a hill but all the other telephones in the area are out of order because the cables were washed downriver.

About midday the birds began to squawk and sing and move around a bit so we knew that the rain was going to ease off.  By late afternoon the waters had abated enough to be able to try and assess the damage.  When things had calmed down a bit we tried to get into Ivirgarzama.  That was not possible because the whole place was completely under water.  Several people were washed away.

At the height of the emergency I called the office in Chimoré and asked the watchman there to go to the UMOPAR (the military) to ask them to come and do something to help the people.  The reply was that they had enough to do looking out for themselves!

The other night watchman slept right through the whole catastrophe.   We had long suspected that he slept all night but had no proof.  This time he was caught red-handed.  Robert and Milton. the electrician, stepped over him about 6 times in the course of the night and day because he was sleeping in the generator house and, when they cut  off the mains supply and connected the generators, he did not even wake up!  At 5:30pm he emerged to start his night´s "work" whereupon Robert dismissed him on the spot.  He had the gall to say that he worked hard for his living not like these filthy foreigners who do nothing at all.  He was in his native country and nobody would dismiss him in a hurry.  He would take the whole thing to the Trade Union and then we would see because he was a revolutionary.  Robert said he was most impressed with his contribution towards saving his fellow countrymen in the middle of the storm, so good-bye.  Come back tomorrow to collect whatever is due to you.  Thank you and good night.  Off he stormed!

The roads to both Santa Cruz and Cochabamba were cut because several bridges had collapsed.  Filippo and Monica arrived back in Santa Cruz yesterday morning and, since the driver had almost been washed away on the way to collect them, he tried to take the old road from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba.  It took them 10 hours to get there because there were avalanches all the way.  They will try and come in to the Chapare from Cochabamba today, although last night the road was closed.  It has not rained since so maybe they will make it.  

My conclusion from all this is that the rainforest should be left as Nature intended.  Everyone should go back to where they came from and the Yukis and Yuras, the tribes who have lived here for centuries, should be left to live as they have always done.  The more trees that are cut down the worse this kind of situation will become.