Desert Flood

Yesterday was the national Marine Corps marathon and since there are many marines on base, they set aside a couple hours in the morning so anyone who wanted to run the marathon could. Scott was assigned to man a Gatorade station at the end of the route. His description of the event is below:

The marathon turned into the world's biggest fiasco... I got out the door at 4:40 AM. It was about 60 degrees and it started to drizzle, which should have been great marathon weather. I went back in my room and got my gor-tex jacket. Our ride showed up at 5:15 finally. We took our post on a corner at the edge of the oasis. The oasis sits in a wadi (kind of like a mini-valley that deserts have). The drizzle turned into pouring rain that lasted two hours.

All of a sudden we were in the world's biggest flash flood. The oasis disappeared; only the tops of the highest palm trees could be seen in a roiling sea of brown current. Hayes, myself, and some others were waist deep in current that was almost knocking us over. We were helping runners through the "river." They were all trying to hug the barricades around our corner, but the current was strongest there. All of a sudden it got to be way too much. Tree limbs were crashing into us. Three Ugandans from the security forces got stranded on a concrete barricade. Their car literally started floating away. We got out of there and the Ugandans got rescued. They tried to re-route our part of the Marine Corps Marathon but after another ten minutes they cancelled the whole thing.

I went to my workplace and was put on stand-by in a huge truck in case we were needed for rescues. Finally they cut me loose but told me to be back by 1 PM.