That Thursday night, on July 9th, 2009, appeared to be just another stormy night, like were all those countless stormy nights before in this miserable rainy and cold summer, the one that people will remember and talk about it for the years to come. But, soon after the midnight, the ever heavier rain started to pound on the roofs of the village Laze, a small hamlet with the houses strewn along the railroad yard and above the double-tracked mainline Ljubljana – Maribor, with such force that everyone has awakened and listened to it with the growing fear. After so many hail storms devastating the roofs, the cars, and the crop in the past weeks, the villagers have expected the icy balls will start to bombard their homes any moment now, but no one anticipated what will really happen.
Soon after 2 am the sinister, continuous, and growing rumble announced something terrible is coming down the hill behind the houses nested on the steep slope above the tracks. Joze Rednak, the owner of the small house in the middle of the lovingly tended flower garden with the small fish pond in one corner, the one that was the highest up the hill, stepped out to see what is happening. With the horror he sighted that the small creek, which should be barely trickling at this time of the year, has turned into swollen, wild torrent, overflowing the banks, already spreading all over the garden, and its wild stream was carrying not only the branches and trees, but also the rocks with the size of the football.
Then the hollow thunder became even louder and the water, the stones, and the rocks started to crash into the house and to pile up the walls. He ran indoors, dragged his wife out of the bed, and they both hurried up the stairs to the upper floor, not a moment too soon as the next moment the house doors opened violently and the river of mud, stones, and rocks started to flow inside. In few minutes the ground floor was filled with the mud to the window sills high and the muddy torrent started to spill out of the house through the windows.
Shortly before that the engineer of the Ljubljana-bound train noted that the water is flowing across the tracks and he immediately radioed the situation to the dispatcher. A stop-on-sight slow order has been issued for this section, and not a moment too soon as shortly afterwards the eastbound intermodal had to stop and back to the Laze yard – there was already two feet high pile of mud covering the both tracks, while the muddy water was violently flowing over and around the mudslide. The mainline, which sees up to 160 trains daily, was effectively closed.
Two hours later, at the first trace of light and still in the rain, fortunately just drizzling now, a squad of gandy dancers, assisted with the several bulldozers, was already cleaning the tracks, the gutters, the ditches, and the stream of the creek which has been filled with the timber, branches, and rocks.
Thousands of cubic feet of mud and earth, piled up to 5 feet high in places, had to be removed, fast.
Trains were already jamming on the tracks of the yards along the line, while the morning commuters were transferred to buses for the final leg of the ride to Ljubljana.
The morning revealed the whole extent of the night weather ravage. Three houses above the tracks were hit really hard. All were filled with mudslide, the interiors of the ground floors practically destroyed, just as has been everything what the water and the earth have found in the gardens and yards, now filled with mud, rocks, and tree trunks, some of them almost three feet in diameter. But, the houses also acted as the barrier, preventing even more landslide material to pile on the tracks and make the cleaning even more difficult and longer.
With the great effort of the maintenance of way crew, at 2 pm the tracks were cleared of the worst and the left, inner track was reopened, albeit with the 6 mph speed limit. The outer track suffered more damage, it has sunken in couple of places and it had to be re-ballasted, tamped, and the rails aligned. This has been accomplished the next morning and in the afternoon both tracks were opened again. However, the slow order will remain in force until no further evidence of the damage will be noted.
The people living in Laze say that they don't remember such violent downpour in the last 60 years. Hopefully they won't experience another one in the next 60 years either.
