Record Flooding In Steung Kach 🌊 Do We Still Have Any Hammock Huts Left? 🛖
Epic flooding caused everybody in Steung Kach to lose a little land today, well at least those with river adjacent land.
Some Tense Moments 🌊
It rains a a lot more here than in the rest of cambodia, but the last week has completely saturated the soil in this valley. Today there was a three or four hour period where it seemed the heavens completely opened the tap. I sensed the river was going to cause some serious erosion and possibly some collapses, so I went down to check out our hammock huts.
Uh-Oh! 🤯
I discovered a piece of our land had moved about a meter downhill, and another piece of land about the size of a small had already collapsed and slid towards the river. I showed my wife the damage, then talked about the need to disassemble the huts within the next week to prevent any potential future losses as the rain season picks up.
Bathroom Break 🐸
AFter our little chat, we walked back up the hill where I found Monkey-B freaking out over a yellow frog on the bathroom door. She insisted I investigate, and I found this cute little guy sound asleep on the door, perhaps exhausted from escaping the torrential rains.
Hammock Huts Aren't Seaworthy 🛥️
About 30 minutes after I left the hammocks huts I began hearing what I thought were lightning strikes. I went to the cabin to get a better view of the river, and I saw massive trees and timbers flowing down the river at breakneck speed, smashing into boulders and breaking into smaller pieces. I noticed the river had climbed 2 meters in the 30 minutes that had passed since my wife and I were last in the hammock hut.
I walked to edge of the cliff hillside and noticed a raging torrent flowing through what is normal the tent-pitching area of the second hut, and the first hut barely out of the water. In the blink of an eye our huts could've gone into the river and became the worst whitewater canoes ever.
Fingers Crossed 🤞
After marveling at the power of nature, I realized my rock piling erosion prevention project is gonna have to move into doubletime very soon. I was stressed enough by imagining the worst possible scenario, so I decided to just let the day become Hive content.
In the mornign I will survey the damage and try to transplant some bamboo to the affected areas of land loss. We may have to use sandbags to get through this year's rainy season, but for now it looks like a solvable problem. From the looks of things though, it appears everyone will wake up tomorrow with a chunk of land missing from the back of their property.
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Oh my! I feel so sad about this news. Keep safe always and take precautions especially this rainy season.
Praying for the safety of your family.
🙏🙏🙏 The rain continues to fall, and now the Earth is very soft, even the places with lots of roots and original soil. We've lost a few more chunks of land and now one of the huts is beyond repair. I am however thankful to see the full might of the river, it gives me a picture for where we can build safely in the future.
I might have some things built near the water's edge in the future, but perhaps just tent platforms without a roof because if one went underwater for a few days it would suffer less damage.
I wondered how likely it would be for floods to happen at your place. That river sure turns scary quickly. I hope everything is okay and you can continue with your projects.
We see floods almost every couple of days, but this recent one was obviously beyond the norm. We asked the locals who also lost land and some structures/fruit trees, and they all said the river gets wild and crazy like this once or twice a year, but this years was more extreme than most have ever seen since they've lived here. At least I now know maximum water levels and speed, any future riverside projects will be constructed to be hydrodynamic, perhaps a tent platform with the upriver side shaped like the hull of a boat to deflect water when it goes under.
Wow that’s wild, just like nature very often is. There are many perks to living where you are, but clearly some danger as well. I’m sure you’ve learned many lessons from this and you can rebuild and be better prepared for this possibility in the future. I’m glad nobody was injured and your main home wasn’t damaged.
Main buildings look to be okay, but I am already thinking we should sandbag the pylons of the new porch and perhaps get some bamboo growing down there. I am a humbled student of nature this week.
The bamboo is used for that in some places? Is sounds like it should work with all its roots network holding the soil together.
Goodness. At least you have an idea of what to expect for next year.
If next year's biblical flood is even just a meter lower, it would do 90% less damage. By looking at a river, you can always see its maximum water levels from recent years, and this year's flood has definitely brought those scars a little more uphill.
OMG, that is sad news! It's rainy season there just like in the Philippines. You all have to be careful. praying that the rain would stop in the coming days. Wishing the best!
🙏🙏🙏 I hear Australia is getting some record rainfall too. On the other side of the mountains we see every day is the ocean, but a few kilometer wide strip of Thailand extends south several hours from us preventing Cambodian sea access. Being so close to the see, I see the clouds always rolling past, but the mountains here grab the clouds and make them drop their rain before moving on. It's an extreme microclimate here.
That was what happened during our stay in Glanz Carinthia. We booked months ahead only to have rain the whole week , we packed our bags and went home. Good that we did not book for the 1st week of July because they had flooding and tourist were stranded. The mountians there were high like 2000 -2500 meters above sea level and are skiing areas.
The micro climate helps the area to be lush, but also extreme humidity can also be a nuisance.
You can rarely have your cake and eat it too, definitely some challenges living in extreme microclimates.
That's a lot of wild water.
Keeping my fingers crossed for you guys.
Some damage done, hammock huts will have to be disassembled and/or relocated to safer ground. I can't believe the rain is still falling, everywhere feels like sponge under my feet in the village.
Hope it all works out. I guess you were aware of this when you bought the land or has the weather become more extreme there too?
Your weather reminds me of the type of climate the survivavil experts in a reality show called 'Alone' have to bear with.
Out here, in central Portugal, it's the polar opposite, extremely dry and we're about to hit 35 to 40 ( and possibly 40+ Celsius ) for the second time this year, in a couple of days.
If you and I could exchange some of our weather and find a balance, that would be lovely.
I could use some Portuguese sunshine at the moment, this place feels more like Ireland the last few months. I think in the future the flooding can only get more extreme the illegal logging, there will be less and less roots to soak up the water in the mountains above us. This is the last forest of Cambodia, and the rate at which it is being destroyed is shocking. I just learned the "mreah prew" tree's oil is the main ingredient in ecstasy, and that cutting the tree or making oil from are all illegal in Cambodia, and it's nearly an extinct species. People in this village have dinner tables made from these trees because it's all soldiers here, nobody gonna stop them. Crazy to think somewhere on the mountainside a Vietnamese crime syndicate is overseeing the production of safrole to smuggle to Holland, a few online docs about it. Ecstacy Forest blew my mind, probably filmed somewhere close to us.
Gosh, that is alot of water. Is that the normal torrent in the river during wet season? I hope your hammock huts survive. Will you be able to move them away from the edge? If they are still there, of course.
The river has subsided, but the collapses haven't yet, the earth is completely saturated here, very unsettling. As soon as we get a day of full sun, it'll be enough to bake a thin layer of solid earth so we can walk around perhaps be able to disassemble the huts so we can use the wood to build something else, perhaps something that won't catch floodwater like a parachute. I'd love to make tent platforms, but with a hull or water deflector of some kind on the upstream side.
You are a very innovative person, I have no doubt you will sort the river/ land slide issue out. I'll be reading about it very soon, I think.
This is sad news that I read from your post, hopefully the rain will end soon and the river water behind your house will not have a worse impact than what happened today.
I pray that you and your family and also the community there are all well my friend 🙏
So far we are okay, but lost a few chunks of land to the river. Our neighbors lost several fruit trees and a hammock hut, so I guess we are pretty lucky.
Stay safe @justinparke , it's raining where I am today, and I'm planning to take a trip with my friends to explore my province. But like the news that I've heard there are some places that are flooded or about high tides. It seems that the weather here is the same as it is here and it's raining
It appears it's wet from Cambodian to Australia, although it seems Australia is having some astonishing floods at the moment. The forest and the mountains here catch all the clouds that roll in from the ocean only 30km away.
Yes, my friend, hopefully the weather will be good in the future
Wow, your post is great, Mr Justinparke, it looks like there's a lot of river water. Be careful, don't come close, you'll be carried away by the current.
Anxiously awaiting some clear water so I can survey the damage and see how much erosion the river has caused.
There is a lot of water flowing, it looks like a disaster is coming. But due to unexpected heavy rains we have already been hit by floods. I hope your situation will return to normal soon.
It seems there is nothing but rain in this part of the world at the moment, from Asia to Australia. We are still getting daily rain here, haven't seen the sun in weeks.
The sun is suddenly rising here with intense heat and it is suddenly raining heavily. There have been many floods in many places on the hill slopes.
I hope my concert stage survive this. But hey, the bigger problem will be the losing land. Believe reclaiming will be another couple of thousand dollars.
The yellow guy in the toilet, have you checked if it's poisonous?
Well, it's a bummer indeed, we've lost some truckloads of dirt for sure. However, the 60+ trucks we got recently only cost $500. My neighbor has an excavator with tracks, and when the rainy season stops, I'd like to see if he can get it in the river and scoop copious amounts of boulders to our riverbank. He's expensive, but he seems to like me, so I hope when the opportunity arises I can get a discount.
I don't know about the frog, but yellow is usually a no-no color. He wasn't concerned about me at all, couldn't even wake him up, so I assume he's got some incredible defenses.
The water flow looks very strong. how do you prevent your lands from getting erosion? How far is your house from the river bank?
I have been piling rocks on the river bank at the beginning of our property in preparation for a potential flood, and it looks like these efforts paid off. I did this at the corner of our first hut, and this hut was not damaged in the flood. We are considering sandbags to replace some of the areas heavily affected by the flood. Our cabin is maybe only 10 meters from the river, but also 20 or 30 meters above it too, and our brick house is 25 meters from the river, but also high above it.
Oh that looks wild (quite literally)! Considering how somebody planned and built that hammock hut right where it is, which itself must have been a while ago, and the fact that it's still there, tells you how extreme this current flood is. But since we can generally expect more extreme weather, I think you're spot on about dismantling the little structure, save the material, and maybe build another, nicer one, later on, a bit further up. Also, I think the sandbags may be a good idea for immediate preparation. The bamboo (and other fast growing plants) are better for the long run, but you don't want to lose any more land that you just got recently.
I originally didn't want to sandbag because of wanting to keep plastic out of the soil, but it looks like it will be absolutely necessary in a few areas. Considering the amount of trash and plastic we've pulled out of the soil since moving in, I guess we have good enough karma to add a bit back in the form of sandbags. If we could get some bamboo to break through the sandbags and root, we could eventually reclaim those areas.
After seeing how fast the river moves when flooding, especially through a particularly narrow section on our property, I think tent platforms will be the most reasonable things to put near the river. Four legs and no walls or roof, and something hydrodynamic on the upstream side like a water deflector, or perhaps a torpedo-shaped tent platform 🤔.
We just got a few new varieties of bamboo for planting, one that doesn't spread aggressively and has tasty shoots, and another that grows slowly but makes nice and straight tubes good for furniture. There is also lots of local bamboo growing in the forest, will probably supplement with some of those too.
I read "huts" as "nuts" in your title, for some reason. Hammock nuts would be a new species for me...
Record floods seems to be occurring a lot of late. The east coast of Australia is still getting them! Their rainy season isn't supposed to be winter, either.
Hoping you don't lose too much and the river doesn't continue to rise much more.
Well I am a little nuts, so maybe you read that right the first time. I was actually tempted to edit the title to "Hammock Nuts" just to have a little fun with you. The river is still violent, but not like it was several days ago. If it's not raining it's misty and raining above us in the peaks, unreal weather.
Damn! That looks pretty serious. I always marvel at the earthquakes here but they’re almost normal to me already. Floods and landslides not so much! Volcanos, no way!
Stay safe!
Earthquakes is a whole other level of terror. I grew up near a fault line in the USA, and experienced a handful of baby quakes in Kentuckiana, but those were nothing compared to what's normal in Japan. When we lived in Ecuador for a bit, about every week in Quito I'd wake up in the middle of the night being tossed around in my bed. It was an unsettling feeling in such an old multi-story brick building that was not up to code.
It looks like a disaster. I've been in floods inIndo-China (I still love the romanticism of that name, so still call it that) and been trapped by floods in Indonesia so understand the magnitude of what's happening
to you. Good luck!
For the most part Cambodian weather is mild and very predictable, and the flooding in the rest of the country doesn't even affect daily life at all, just ride your moto through a meter of water every in town like it's normal. But here in the mountains near the Thai border, this microclimate is really extreme. I would bet we have double the rainfall of the ricefield areas of the country.
It's interesting to watch the new weather patterns and see the new normal. Scary too!
Wow!!! That is some strong current, holy crap!!!
Nature is scary to me sometimes, so brutal it can be. I like the idea of hammock juts... what is that about, a place to chill?
In the end did you lose any of these huts or just nearly with that one in the image?