‘It started with an announcement that there would be no rain. People were sitting calmly in their huts. And then suddenly, at 5 o’clock on April 27- it was just after a day off - they said on the radio that there would be a flood. They told us which streets would be flooded, but by them lots of people had their houses flooded and were standing on their roofs… By the morning of the 29th you couldn’t see the first floor windows at all. The men made a raft, which we used to get to dry land, that is, to a hill, where we waited until the water receded, and I got home again on May 5. Now I will tell you about how people coped. On April 29 almost the whole town was flooded. People were sitting on their roofs, in the middle of a small sea, shouting out Help! and We are dying! et cetera. First they rescued the people whose houses were at risk of collapsing, while those whose buildings were in better condition had to sit and wait. And they only rescued people, all their things were left behind in their attics… The whole town spent a day on the hill, and at night people crowded into all the schools, clubs and other public buildings, where there was nowhere to sit or lie down, and in the morning we went up to the hill again… We started to run out of bread, the bread got wet, and they organized flights from places that were not flooded and dropped supplies to the hill, and from there people took them to the shop for distribution.’