July 26, 2012
Apparently on Thursday, July 26, 2012 Tianjin experienced the worst rain fall and flooding in 40 years.
We were home all day on Thursday and while it did rain all day long it just didn't seem to me to be an extraordinary rain…. I've seen plenty of rain storms that last longer and rained harder. But apparently it was a LOT for Tianjin. Not a week earlier Beijing was also hit with huge rain fall and had massive issues with flooding.
Honestly, there should NOT have been a flooding issue if the drainage systems were designed and installed properly. Of course they're not- as we've noticed over and over again sometimes things just don't make sense in China. Why do they put the drainage on the high side of the road??? That means if there is any rain at all there will be standing water- for no place for it to go!!!
It's a bit of a bummer than we didn't venture outside and take photos of the flooding. It was a movie-and-hot chocolate-kind-of-day for us! 🙂 Our backyard had a little bit of standing water but it by no means had a pond. We heard that some of the houses with basements in our compound flooded. UGH!!!
A friend took these photos of the school:
WOW!!!! The school is right across the street from us!
On July 27 (Friday) the girls and I met my Chinese language teacher at the Aquarium Market (that's when we bought Annika the fish tank for her birthday gift)…these are photos I took from the drive there:
Driving in deep water- or water of unknown depths- just seems like a dangerous thing to do. I'll feel a lot better when the water goes away.
Normally a dry pond….now look at it:
Yikes! Let's hope we don't see rain like that any time soon.