STORM CIARA IN WATERLOO

Since Saturday evening Belgium expected the strongest wind or storm ever recorded. Everybody was talking about that in the Newspapers, Radios and TV and gave instructions what to do to protect the properties or houses or buildings or themselves. Now this makes it sound exaggerated to people living in countries where storms are something nearly "normal". This is not the case here the last one we had with winds over 180 nearly 200 km/h was in 1999 and from that day on, each time a breeze is blowing every wood, park etc is closed. We fell from one extreme to the other.

This time the wind speed should reach 140 km/h or a little more. And it happened ! At the coast it was even more

Here in Waterloo we had rather small damages compared to other countries. My friends were lucky except two, one had a piece of her gazebo blown away and the other the fence of her garden like  on the picture below. We had nothing except two flower pots which turned over and now I have all the earth on the white tiles of the entrance !!

Finally we were lucky because we head no dead maybe a few injured but nothing serious.




This garden had less luck



The renovation of the new shopping center was seriously disturbed



The works had to be stopped of course and you could just watch how things collapsed




Some roads were blocked by old trees which didn't resist the strong wind and fell across the streets.



This old barn was also heavily damaged



There is a lot to do for the firemen and other helpers to cut the trees and free the streets.

Of course all woods and parks were closed.



A renovated school was also heavily damaged



and of course some cars



The historical building was lucky the tree didn't hit it



Some people couldn't get out with their cars until the firemen had pulled the tree aside



The old cemetary of Waterloo was heavily damaged too. It's very close to our house, maybe tomorrow I could go there and take some pictures, it's certainly closed because too dangerous for visitors.








Our train station  is beeing modernized and was quite damaged by Ciara.

Besides the material damages, there were also car accidents, trains retarded, and airplanes cancelled.

While I am typing it is still howling around the house and the worst noise is in our open fire although I had closed the flap, but the wind plays in the chemney.

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