June 8, 2007

Gonu is gone, but...

Folks - I could not come back to you as there were no network coverage near my place.

Things are getting normalized at a faster pace. After making quite a lot of visible damages to Muscat city, Gonu is now gone. Do check out the pictures that I will be posting at here in a while and a few videos at You Tube. Oops.. we really do not know how many days and months it would take for the authorities to bring back Muscat how it was before. Police, defence, security personnel, ambulance services, volunterring research and rescue guards, etc., all are working very hard and can be seen all over the main roads and interior placess with their walky-talkies taking initiatives to help the needy and to restore the badly affected roads. The water-filled roads were the main obstacles for everyone to reach the people who needed help while Gonu was striking.

The general public seems to be totally out of fear now. May be some of them are in a picnic mood taking pictures posing in front of a damaged building, tree, or a car. This would definitely disturb the personnel who are working very hard in getting things under absolute control. Government has announced 4-day holidays, so I think people should stay at home and not to travel on the roads without a valid reason. This would help the officials in some way. May I request my Omani readers not to take things soo lightly. Please do stay at home. Stay dry and safe.

Many vital roads, roundabouts, vehicles, houses and buildings, so many trees, small bridges, causeways, etc., were all washed away or destroyed by the storm and rain water.
I have received the confirmed news of only 4 death cases so far; 2 at Seeb and 2 at Qurum. There could be many; this is scary because quite a lot of rain water is still flowing at some of the wadis as small rivulets. There is no water supply in most of the areas. Electricity is yet to come back at Al Qurum, Hail, and Darsait regions. Most of villages are disconnected from the main city as the roads are cut by the wadis and can not be used until new roads are constructed or an alternative arrangement is made. We hope that we would be able to return back to work by tomorrow morning. Insha allah!

That is it for now folks. More later. There seems to be some snags from my side in uploading pictures at Flickr and videos at YouTube for now; I will keep trying. Stay tuned!

Thanks for all your prayers and comments given via this blog comments. It is definitely an other source of inspiration to us here. Cheers!

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