We had a wild and completely untamed storm that hit tel aviv the other day. It was hurricane like in scope and damaged most of the boardwalk from the south end ( Jaffa- where we live) to the north end ( leading into herziliya). I was out running the first and second days of the storm and saw bricks in the deck of the old city in Jaffa, being thrown up in the air. I watched as trees fell in front of me and braches flew beside me. I hopped over piles of cigarettes that made their way up onto the roads and somehow found eachother like brothers in kind. Mountains of refuse lay everywhere. It was as if the sea got fed up and threw up all the garbage that was laying ill in it's bowels.
After two days the storm stilled it's voluptous winds and the rain came to a peter. Rays of sunshine peaked out and a rainbow dared to make an appearance. Within 24 hours, Isreal sprung into action and managed to almost completely rehabilitate our damaged waterfront and the beautiful port in old jaffa. It was pretty incredible to see how poor we are at prevention and how skilled we are at disaster response after the fact. Ironic and comical almost.
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i dont know if youre back yet.. but our waterfront is still a mess.. there are sewage pipes floating all along the yaffo beach front and none of the garbage has been collected and all of the shoreline greenery comprising mostly slow growth succulents has been and remains severely damaged.. the list goes on.. we are far from the wonder situation that you describe..
I couldn't even begin to quantify the amount of garbage littering the shores of Jaffa straight along to Bat Yam. Although I haven't seen any floating remnants of sewage pipes, I have no doubt that they're still happily surfing along the salty water near the shore. Any greenery, of which I never saw very much of, is going to take a while to regenerate. But the overt physical damage to the boats and to the tayelet under the old city was almost completely repaired within 48hours. The flood under the galleries receded, destroyed boats surfaced and were towed up to be rebuilt, and all the jerusalem stone along the road leading to the jaffa namal was replaced completely after having been torn up so severly that one section looked like a wrecking ball hit it before the clean up. The construction is one of our forte's. Ecological concern and protection needs to improve...
if you head a few metres north and south you'll see that all the stone ramps leading from the promenade to the shore have erroded like youwouldnt imagine in 50 years.. and no one has done anything to fix them.. last time i surfed - over the past weekend - all the railings had been swept away with no sign of anyone planning to attend to them..
i wish i saw things as you do..
http://emspeace.blogspot.com/2010/12/natures-wrath.html
maybe the municipality needs a good local activist/advocate/architect to push for and design improvements that won't happen otherwise.
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