Tag: disaster
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"You saved my life!" (or: how my kids briefly thought I was a superhero)
A misunderstanding by my kids this weekend briefly made them think that I'd pulled a stranger from a burning building... when in reality I only lent him a mobile phone charger.
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An unexpected start to the kids' and I's glamping weekend last night when the static caravan behind our dome burned to the ground. We spent most of our night half way down a field watching the fire crews tackle the blaze.
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A static caravan is engulfed in flames behind a dome tent, at night.
(Nobody was injured; the residents were able to escape out of a window.)
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As if I hadn't suffered enough "flood damage" this year, I started my first workday since rebuilding my home office setup - hour the first time in months! - in our rental... by pouring a cup of coffee into my keyboard. 😱
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A desktop computer keyboard inverted over a kitchen sink, with many of its keycaps scattered around.
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6-12 Months
"How long should we plan on renting another house to live in?" I asked, warily.
"Six to twelve months?" guessed the loss adjusters. -
F-Day plus 3
It's only been three days since we had to evacuate our rapidly-flooding house. Here's some horror pics.
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Normal life
I want normal life back now, please.
I appreciate that it's only 40-ish hours since my house flooded and we had to move out. But with all the stress and activity that's necessarily followed, it feels like it's been so much longer.
Unrelated note: why has the person in the room above me at this hotel been … -
The calm after the storm
This morning, from my Premier Inn window, the skies are clear. I could almost forget that, just 4 miles away, my house is full of water.
Today may well be a day of waders and damage assessment, conversations with insurance companies and of working out where we'll be living for the near future.
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Flood
My house is under water.
Well, fuck. -
Hurricane Milton
From safely outside of its predicted path, just around the Yucatan coast, Hurricane Milton seems like a forboding and distant monster. A growing threat whose path will thankfully take it away, not towards, me. My heart goes out to the people on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico who find themselves along the route of this awakened beast.
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Grenfell Tower: The fires that foretold the tragedy
On 14 June 2017, televisions across the country showed a west London tower block burn. For some, this was history repeating itself - as if five similar fires had simply not been important enough to prevent the deaths of 72 people in Grenfell Tower.
Catherine Hickman was on the phone when she died. It … -
Ghost town 13. Night ride through the dead zone
Elena Filatova
If you've not come across her before: Elena Filatova is a Ukranian woman who periodically motorcycles through the Chernobyl exclusion zone, recording her progress and filming/photographing what she sees on her adventures. I bought her photobook the other year and I've particularly enjoyed her videos ever since. Worth a look. -
Oxford Under Water
Parts of Oxford have flooded, making it difficult for Dan to cycle to work. Difficult... but not impossible! Wellies on, Dan sets out into the disaster zone.
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Water
My house is full of it. This isn't good.
Much thanks to Welsh Water, where a friendly man talked me through the quirks in my stop tap (who'd have thought that it would be so hard to turn a tap off and drain a system). Now I suppose I ought to start mopping. Then I suppose …