Andy Fletcher » Rain http://ams1.x31.com/~andy Telecommunications Consultant Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:25:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Rain in Doha http://ams1.x31.com/~andy/2009/12/rain-in-doha/ http://ams1.x31.com/~andy/2009/12/rain-in-doha/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:39:12 +0000 Andy http://ams1.x31.com/~andy/?p=2241 Continue reading →]]> Winter has arrived in Doha. About 10 days ago we had rain which caused serious flooding all over the city. This is because Qatar is basically a thin rock covering over an impervious rock base so the water just sits there and goes nowhere for a long time. There are a few drains which quickly fill with sand and assorted crap thereby becoming useless for anything other than as a man trap.

Today is National Day when they parade through the city, wave flags everywhere and generally drive in a more reckless manner than normal. Yes, you guessed right, it rained most of the day causing more flooding and general chaos on the roads.

The place I live in is on a small compound. The compound is surrounded by an road which loops in an oval about 300m on its long axis. The compound is at one end within the enclosed land the rest being wasteland.

When it last rained water drained into the road converting the compound into an island surrounded by dirty water about 30cm deep. After a couple of days the municipality sent a stream of water tankers to pump the water off the road and take it away.

As I am writing this the water has flooded about 30% of the road loop and the municipality has just sent a large tanker to pump out the water again.

However the locals are not to be outdone. In a burst of imagination someone has arranged to get a portable pump and pump the water off the road onto the wasteland in the centre. This would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that the water promptly runs back onto the road off the wasteland bringing even more mud and associated crap with it. Of course the locals are not the ones doing the pumping that has been left to some guys from the Indian subcontinent who work for them and will carry out the job unquestioningly.

When the tanker driver arrived he waved madly at them pointing out where the water was running back onto the road about 15m from where they were standing and they have finally shut off the pump as they evidently decided it was getting just too silly. They are now loading it up back onto their pickup before they go back to the villa about 100m away.

The really stupid thing is there is a good land drain in the flooded area. I have seen tankers discharging into it in the past. The only problem is it is blocked with crap. They would have been much better digging the mud off it then using the pump to excavate the silt from the hole. Once the water starts flowing it would clear itself in seconds.

Oh such fun :-)

]]> http://ams1.x31.com/~andy/2009/12/rain-in-doha/feed/ 0