Black Tuesday in Cascade

Although I’ve referred to Black Tuesday more than once in this and other columns, I find, to my surprise, that I’ve not actually re-written the story I  wrote in November 1979. So, with the Cascade hills now burned almost bare of protective tree cover, many more developments and the consequent shape of things to come in mind, here is the story of Black Tuesday retold for new residents of Upper Cascade to ponder . . .

“Who would have thought on the bright, sunny morning of Tuesday, November 13, that before the day was out, well-heeled residents of Upper Cascade would have formed their own, volunteer branch of DEWD? Although contaminated water flowed from many a tap and standpipe, here and there a lucky telephone subscriber received or made calls outside the Belmont Exchange. The previous day’s cloudburst had washed  roadsides clear of litter. Despite all my croakings about developments gone berserk, logging, slash-and-burn gardeners and the squatter settlement above WASA’s intake (hence the contaminated water) the worst hadn’t happened. November 13 promised to be a perfectly normal, ordinary day in the life of Upper Cascade and La Blanca residents.

However, at midday came another cloudburst to rival that of the day before. Prudent residents home for lunch decided to wait until the rain stopped before returning to work. The first to venture out found three cars floundering in silt, mud and gravel a foot deep, desperately striving to avoid shells of old air-conditioners, fridges, advertising signs, two huge bales of paper and a 20-foot long contraption washed out of the disused factory at the end of Cheapside. The first prudent driver helped push the cars out of trouble before going  home to get a shovel, and return to begin the gargantuan task of clearing mud and assorted debris off the bridge. Within an hour, seven men and four women (including myself and daughter) formed a volunteer brigade with gardening tools to clear both road and bridge and to cut a channel through the muck to drain floodwaters from a ground floor apartment on Cheapside where lived a young couple with two small children. An eighth man took charge of a stout wheelbarrow.

From time to time we paused to let cars go by, asking drivers to report to WASA the two water mains ripped apart by a rogue tree trunk washed down by the floods. A worker’s wife arrived bearing a basket of cooling drinks. Cries of “water lady” echoed around the valley. The Upper Cascade branch of DEWD was now complete. WASA employees stopped their truck to report that things were much worse in La Blanca at the far end of the valley. It was probably WASA who carried the news of our volunteer DEWD brigade from Knightsbridge to La Blanca. At 3.30 pm six occasional DEWD “regulars” appeared  bearing one large pitchfork between them. Their fees, they said, were reasonable.

Doubting that we could match government’s generous pay for a normal DEWD day’s task, we ignored the “regulars” and continued shovelling to a chorus of “all yuh do wan’ us to wuk?” But surely, we reasoned, these men were needed to clean up their own backyards in La Blanca? DEWD “regulars” departed. Residents who lunched in town came home. Some joined the work force believing that many hands made light work, others reckoned that too many cooks spoiled the broth. By 7 pm the bridge and the path to the young couple’s door was reasonably clear. The weary volunteers downed a last drink, shouldered their tools and trudged home for a sponge bath and pray that WASA would fix those mains in record time.

Early next morning the county council appeared with two shovels, a rickety wheelbarrow and five men to clear a 20-yard stretch of the Cascade Road. At 10 am a building contractor, who is also a local resident, brought his own private bulldozer to clear on the mess. The county council, who knew when they were beaten, sat down to watch. In an hour, or less, the bulldozer had scraped the dirt off the approach to two private houses and part of Knightsbridge Road. It dumped a large part of its load along Cheapside. The young couple were now back to more or less normal. The volunteers were disbanded. WASA was busy as bees fixing the mains. The county council had given up and gone home. DEWD was liming on the rubble-strewn streets of La Blanca. Residents with time to spare were inspecting the cause of the damage.

Bush fires, squatters, slash-and-burn gardeners, and hillsides cut by developers — all these had lived up to my gloomiest predictions of the multiple, massive mudslides of Black Tuesday. The mudslides that had choked and dammed the ravines with boulders and, when those dams burst, boulders had smashed down retaining walls holding the fill that supported two huge concrete cisterns on the edge of the ravine behind a new block of condominiums. Many an amateur prophet of doom had warned that a medium earthquake would bring both walls and cisterns tumbling down: in the event, floodwaters did the job. The wrecked retaining wall and cisterns formed a next dam. The thwarted water raged through the back door of that disused factory (now, in 2003, Royal Bank Archives).

Merciful Providence ordained that no man, woman or child, in car, on foot or bicycle was walking along Cheapside or crossing the bridge when the factory gates burst asunder and a wall of debris-charged water roared down Knightsbridge and the Cascade Road. Such is the cost of development, squatting, slash-and-burn gardeners and maliciously set bush fires. November 13 was a Black Tuesday for Upper Cascade. It wasn’t as bad as the Belmont floods the day before, but it might have been much worse. Pray God it never will be.” But it was . . . in St Ann’s, in October 1993. And in 2003?