Evacuation

Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.

Where we are: Today we’re in Konya, Turkey, visiting the excavated remains of the Neolithic settlement known as Catalhoyuk. I am giddy. I am also a geek.

Evacuation

Fun fact: last week, we evacuated from our apartment in Austria a day early.

The heat broke over the weekend, with a couple days of occasional thunderstorms, followed by a steady light rain all day on Sunday. Monday morning when we woke up, the river below our apartment, which had been a crystal-clear stream burbling over the rocks on Friday, was now a fast-moving torrent of roiling brown water.

Lee drove in to town for breakfast (because of the rain; he had walked in for the last 26 days in a row), and came back saying I should stroll down and see how high the water was under the bridge—amazing, unbelievable, he said.

We didn’t realize how prophetic his amazement was.

I walked down the hill (which takes about 5 minutes) in my flip-flops, because it was still raining and I didn’t want to soak my sneakers. The water was indeed running very high, but it looked like it was still a couple of feet below the bottom of the bridge, so I didn’t think much of it. The spots where it had breached the banks further up were much more interesting. I wondered if it would rise as far as the trail, where I had walked each evening to enjoy the cool breeze off the water.

I walked across the bridge, took a few photos, and realized that the fire department had blocked off the road to the left (the direction we usually go when we head out in the car). Interesting.

By the time I climbed back up the hill to the apartment and looked out the window, the river had begun to spill over the bank and run onto the trail, in the spot I could see from our window. Also interesting. Lee and I stood on our balcony with binoculars, studying the river and discussing the structural integrity of Austrian engineering. If the bridges are anything like the ski lifts/roads/buildings, this bridge would be absolutely fine. Clearly, this was a regular event, given the flash flood warning signs and the way houses were set back from the river, buffered by wide fields.

I started to fret—what about lunch? I have priorities, people. We had finished all the cheese the day before, and the thought of lunching on a few leftover olives and a heel of raisin bread seemed … unsatisfying. Lee was unconcerned. It would be fine: Austrian engineering and all. I caught him cutting a thin sliver off the raisin bread and might’ve threatened his life.

About an hour later I took a break from writing and walked back down the hill, curious to see if the road on the other side had reopened.

Not only had it not, but a barricade now blocked our road and two fire fighters were standing guard, in case the barricade wasn’t a clear enough message. There was no leaving. The only way out of our tiny neighborhood of about a dozen houses was to climb UP the mountain (on foot) to the next village. We were trapped.

One of the firefighters told me that there are gas pipes attached to the underside of the bridge, and the water was so high and full of tree debris (from an earlier storm) that they were concerned that a big branch might hit the pipe. He struggled to find the words, waving his hands in the air, and finally settled on “big boom.” He apologized for his poor English; I said his English was excellent—I totally understood ‘big boom.’

The neighbors had gathered, and we stood there watching. There was enough English in the group to help me understand that a) no one could remember this ever happening before, and b) if the water receded a bit, they’d open the bridge, but heavier rains were expected in the afternoon, so it would probably be closed again pretty quickly. Everyone agreed that we should pack up our car and be ready to leave if we got a chance.

So that’s what we did. I walked down the hill every hour or so, to check. Finally, around two, I got to the bottom of the hill and saw that the barrier was gone. I texted Lee: Let’s go.

I held my breath as Lee drove us across the bridge, but there was no Big Boom. We followed the detour on the far side, a muddy track littered with tree limbs left behind by the receding water.

And five minutes later, we drove through Mayrhofen, where everything looked … completely normal. People were going about their business. Restaurants were packed. Tourists were chatting and laughing and not paying close attention to where they were walking. Everyone was wearing rain gear, but otherwise the whole scene was exactly what it had been the day before.

The cognitive dissonance, y’all—it was jarring. We’d been so immersed in our situation that it seemed as if everyone around us must be in panic mode as well. But they weren’t. For the rest of the afternoon, while Lee drove us to Munich on straight, beautiful, well-engineered highways, I ruminated on the strangeness of the feeling.

It’s easy to forget that the alarm bells in my head are audible only to me. If we hadn’t been planning to leave early the next morning for a flight, that barricaded bridge would’ve been nothing more than an interesting footnote at the end of an unpleasant heat wave. I probably wouldn’t even have remembered it for more than a day or two.

I lost my perspective in the scramble to change our plans, and the belief that a crisis was unfolding took over my awareness. A few blocks away, it was just a rainy day.

A few years ago, we were in Istanbul when an act of domestic terrorism made global news. We, of course, were unaware of it until much later. I happened to be walking in that neighborhood just a couple of hours after it happened, and a block away life was completely normal. People were going to the market, running errands, drinking tea, sitting in traffic.

In my (incredibly privileged and lucky, duh) experience, if an emergency doesn’t directly affect me, I can’t even tell it’s happening. When I read the news, I have to remind myself: a crisis on one side of the bridge doesn’t necessarily affect the other side. Perspective matters—it all depends which side of the bridge you’re on.

Take care,

Lisa

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