Jakarta Floods

This is our street.
Our living room with all of our stuff from storage and the pool table room piled up to keep dry.
That is water on the floor...I drew a line where the water had risen to...very close to coming into our living room.

After I wrote my blog last Thursday, I went to bed with the rain still coming down hard. Well, at about 11:30 at night or so, Tika and I heard a loud bang outside our bedroom. I went out to investigate. I didn't see anything at first, and then turned the corner to look at the pool table room area, and I saw all of our statues floating. The water got so high on our street, it came in through our garage, and into our house. The water got to almost knee high. Then we realized, that if the water was in the pool table room, it must be in the kitchen and other rooms on the lower level. Yep. It had got into our storage room as well. We woke everyone up in the house except Kayla, and started to frantically move all the books and other things in the storage room out of the water, and into our living room which is two steps higher than the three lower rooms. We managed to get everything out of the storage room and kitchen, but lost some books and framed photos that I had on the floor. The rain kept coming down for another 3 hours....at about 2:00 in the morning, the water was inches from the top step. If it had risen just a few more inches, water would have been all over the house ruining almost everything we own. Luckily, the rain stopped, and the water never made it higher than the top step.

Tika and I had to go out and move the cars as the water had climbed close to door level. We moved both cars to the top of the street where the water was shallower. We then drove around to try to find some sand bags to put on our steps in case the water kept climbing. You wouldn't believe the traffic at 2:00 in the morning. I guess others had the same idea. In the meantime, Tika's niece was stranded at the restaurant she works at as Kemang was flooded with nearly 6 feet of water. She was able to walk through chest high water to the main street where we were able to pick her up. She said that she saw three snakes swimming in the water when she was walking. One of the snakes was a huge python as big as my leg that several indonesian guys were wrestling to capture....can you imagine?

We got Sri safely back home, and then just prayed the rain would stop, and would not climb any higher. Eventually, the rain slowed, and the water level dropped. We all went to bed at around 3:30 in the morning.

At 7:15, I overslept for school. I panicked to get my clothes on, when the phone rang. A message from school saying that school was cancelled for the day due to the flooding in Jakarta. Ah, that was nice to hear. I looked into the pool room, and all the water had drained out, but there was alot of mud, and stuff was scattered everywhere. Our driver showed up at about 9:00 in the morning, and he went out and found a truck of sand, and he and a couple of other guys filled bags of sand that we piled into various places around the house including in front of our gate. We got another big down pour at around 10:00, and water came into the house again, but not as bad as the night before.

Finally, with the tremendous effort of our household staff, everything has been cleaned, rugs are drying, and all is back to normal. We have had no cell phone service or internet for the past four days, and school was cancelled today because the school's water system was not working. The only good thing about that was we were able to watch the Super Bowl live at 6:30 in the morning.

Today, it was pretty dry...some rain, but nothing like before. I think we will all be back to school tomorrow. Whew.....what an experience. Our prayers go out for all the people in Jakarta who were not so fortunate. The flooding was really bad in some areas of the city where thousands of people have lost everything they own, and are still underwater.

Anyway, we are all fine, and sorry I wasn't able to get in contact until now.