The Daily IIJ

Living in Hanoi for nearly 20 years, I have never witnessed anything worse than the flood in my capital city last week. It made not only me, but many Hanoians seriously shocked. I myself and my whole family became victims of that flood.

The rain started late on Thursday night (30 October). It was cool enough to fall into a sound sleep. But the next morning, when I woke up, I could not believe in my eyes. When I looked through the window, the water was everywhere around our house. My house was like an isolated island! A lot of garbage was floating around. The terrible thing was that our underground water tank was deep into dirty flood. It means that we did not have clean water except the small tank in the 4th floor.

Of course we could not get out of the house to go anywhere than to stay at home. I was thinking that the water will go away in the afternoon (like other times). But the rain was so irregular that it came down harder and harder. And there was no sign that it would stop in some hours.

The big problem was how to get food in such situation. We were all 4 people, myself, my husband and my 2 kids. Fortunately, we had some left noodles, some eggs and enough rice for everybody. No vegetables. Even if there were vegetables, I did not have any clean water to wash them.

The rain continued all day and into the evening Friday. And it never stopped till the following week. The sound of thunder and massive rain not only made my kids terrified but also me and my husband. Watching television and surfing web, we were more shocked to see almost everywhere in Hanoi sank into the flood. People said it was the worst flood in Hanoi since 1971 when the dyke around the city was broken. A lot of streets had turned into a river and people started to use boats to travel around.

The weather forecast was so bad. We never thought that the rain was so heavy. The worse thing was that Hanoi was already flooded for nearly two days, but no local authorities said anything. People woke up in the morning and realized that the water was not going anywhere, but it became worse and worse. When it will go? In the morning we hoped that “maybe in the afternoon”, in the afternoon we hoped “maybe in the evening”…

My house was still lucky enough that the main rooms did not flood whereas a lot of other houses in the city were deep even 1 meter in the water. There was no clean water, no electricity, no food. We could contend till Sunday afternoon only and then decided to evacuate to my sister’s house which in a safe area. Luckily that we had a place to go.

The massive rain stopped on Monday or Tuesday only, but the aftermath around my house went on the whole following week. The water went away very, very slowly. So dirty, so polluted. Till last Sunday (9 November) we could go back home after a long day to clean and tidy up everything… Exhausted! ((