‘Pothole’ in Wellawatta [picture updated, more]
I don’t own an umbrella. Or, more accurately, I own many umbrellas but possess none. Drop my car off at the shop to get the suspension tested. Apparently the back is about to fall off so I leave the car there. Venture my head out and catch a three to office. So all’s well. After work it looks damp but tolerable, so I put my headphones on and hoof it. And then it starts coming down. First a little, then a lot. Then a lot a lot. Duck under an awning to find that it’s only an arch. Fuck. Just wait. It’s not getting any better. Decide to run to the bus stand across the street. Get an ankle deep in puddle and skin deep in rain by the time I get there. Swim to the bus and try not to slip out of the precariously leaning behemoth. This is rainy season in Colombo I guess. The roads flood after an hour and public transit becomes a public pool. The people at the garage laugh at me, but I’m OK with that.
According to the Met department, Colombo got over 12 cm of rain in 24 hours. You could see it coming down in pelts and feel the thunder as if it was directly above. At times the sky continuously shuddered with lightning. Colombo’s drainage system is bad on a good day, but it completely crumpled yesterday. Everything was flooded – parking lots, Lipton Circus, Battaramulla, and I’d imagine a lot of the Havelock/Thumulla area. Those roads take forever to drain and the stench afterwards is awful. The putrid green canals near Kirimandala Mawatha and round Rajagiriya are overflowing, emptying they’re fetid contents into the streets. Also, people here empty sewage directly into storm drains, so when you get an actual storm you get a literal shit storm. Not to mention the disease and Chikkungunia and mosquitoes that will come, oy.
When the roads flood the far lane becomes unusable, so traffic gets severely bottlenecked. Not to mention the roundabouts which become rotating swamps. It can take 30 minutes to move 30 yards, and 2-3 hours to get to work. Cars get moored in the median, forced to settle on the island and repopulate the earth from there. The rain is so heavy that even umbrellas are futile. More seriously, there are huge motherfucking holes in the ground which can swallow you up. The CMC takes manhole covers (as many as there are) off to clear the water or just cause they forgot to replace them. Yesterday a young woman from Save The Children fell deep into a manhole and drowned (Daily Mirror).
The plus side of the rain is that it generates electricity and may stave off power cuts, but alas, it needs to rain somewhere else entirely. This bit is just a wash.
Sounds like hell.
Bloody hell.. & I thought my rodent problem was serious.
Aiyo did the the tigers do this? Terrible no?
Before we have been lucky enough to be free of most natural disasters. For the last few years it seems nature is catching up on it fury. We are not prepared for anything, including another tsunami. Lets hope at least some ‘action’ can start now that our ever failing infrastructure is exposed yet again.
That hole is almost identical to the hole that appeared in Maradana. I’m not sure the first hole is fixed yet and am not sure the hole in Wella will get fixed ASAP. So traffic is going to be a bitch…. Which means I’ll have to leave home early to get to class… Dammit…
The holes are punched in the roads by Alien Space-Bowsers that land on the middle of the road to collect water for the annual inter-planetary water fights. Earth is still banned from this event, since we have an unfair advantage when it comes to water.
What the hell is that picture? It looks like a photoshop image, much like the “hole” that appeared in Maradana turned out to be.
The hole in Maradana was real.
The actual hole in Maradana was half the size of this, but there were photoshop jobs of it going round via mail (bloated up to twice its size). This may be real though, it’s probably the quality of the pic that made me think its not. My Bad.
That damn fool of a mayor (puppet) should be thrown into jail on second degree murder charges. All the major roads outside Colombo are actually a pleasure to drive on now, but the capital city itself is a mess. Maybe his threewheeler should sink into one of them holes for him to realise.
found a better photo and updated it above
Second degree murder? You want him to face trial in the US? Universal jurisdiction kind of thing…
They’ve started fixing the Wellawatta pothole. Lot bigger now, coz they’re dug round the original hole. Lanes goin towards Galle are open. But the lanes coming into colombo are blocked by the repair wrk… Vehicles have to take a side lane (Can’t remember the names). u can either come back to the main road past the hole (near petrol shed) or go to the marine drive. Not much probs today coz its Sunday. Buses turn at Williams Junction. HOPEFULLY, they’ll fix it soon… :-)