Tropical Storm Alma

David: We recently were hit, and hit hard, by a storm that formed over the Pacific that gradually escalated into Tropical Storm Alma. Alma is the Spanish word for soul and this storm definitely showed a lot of soul to us. Here at QERC we sustained over 15 inches of rain in three days. At one point we had 4 inches in 2 1/2 hours. Other parts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua received more than that. The Panamanian-American Highway between QERC and Cartago was closed for two days due to trees and landslides but between QERC and San Isidro it is still closed because the highway is just flat out gone in certain spots where slides took the whole thing. Apparently there were several hundred people stuck on the highway between two landslides for at least 2 days without food.

Here at QERC we endured the storm with no major damage and we were able to watch a powerful display of the force of water. The Savegre Valley was a mess. The river was so high that between here and the trail to the waterfall the river was up over the road at three places. In fact, right across from QERC the river was over the road and pounding into the bank of the property across from us. Logs striped of any kind of foliage were careening down the water on the road. The river was touching the bottom of the Hotel Savegre's bridge, about 3 feet over Fernando's bridge at Los Ranchos, and it completely took away the last swinging bridge before the big waterfall. The river was so powerful that for about 5-6 hours straight we couldn't see them but we could hear boulders under the water being pushed down the river and pounding into other boulders. Every time that would happen the whole building would feel the vibrations of the impact. It was like hundreds of little earthquakes. At one point I was outside watching the river during the height of our rainfall and I saw an Alder get ripped down up stream and it was past me in about 1 second and gone. It would have been instant, or at least guaranteed, death for anyone that fell in that river.

The storm let up on Thursday night and on Friday it was beautiful and sunny so we got out to check out the damage around the valley. Our valley road, which is our only road in and out of here, was closed for about 2 days due to trees and one big and several small landslides. We were without power for 2 days.

At QERC we were close to a few problems. At the height of the storm on Thursday, water was draining off the back property down to where the rain gauge is. There was so much water coming down that it formed a creek about 4 feet wide on our back lawn. The creek flowed to the corner of the building and split going on both sides. At the height of the rainfall we had water on all four sides of the building flowing completely against the building at about 2 inches deep. QERC was literally surrounded by a moat. The only door you could walk out without directly stepping in the creek was our apartment door. I was really worried it would come in the doors but the level started going down once it was about an inch from the bottom of the door frame. That would have been a muddy mess to clean up. The stream that was split by the building partly just flowed down the front grass area and joined other water to create a creek flowing down the road past Rolando's, Carlos's, and down to Pablo's. The water that didn't flow down there rejoined on the west side of the building and all flowed off the embankment right across from our apartment. There was so much water running off there, and also one of the gutters from the roof exits from under the ground right there as well. Unfortunately, all of that water, combined with an area that Pablo says was a lot of back fill from construction, with no large tree on it, created a fairly significant landslide into the river. This was the scariest thing for Sarah and I. The landslide slowly kept growing as the storm persisted. It is now stabilized but it is only 15 feet from the edge of the building.