What I'm worried about will happen eventually —— "July 21"rainstorm in memory

That day was July 2 1 and July 20 12, which was recorded in the history books of Beijing because of the "July 21"rainstorm. At half past eight in the evening, I drove out. There are not many pedestrians on the road, and the rain spreads on the road, shaking the lights and turning around.

When I came to the south gate of Zhongguancun Software Park, the whole park was dark, like an unfinished construction site, very quiet. Only the sentry box at the door was lit, and the doorman waved to me and shouted, "The car can't get in." So, I stopped at the roadside and walked into the software park with an umbrella.

The farther you go, the more water is accumulated on the road surface, which is particularly turbid under the dim street lights. Along the direction of water flow, at the edge of the road, there is a small vortex, which is where there is a rainwater manhole cover. Further inside, you can't see the whirlpool. Instead, water gushes from the roadside and smells like a sewer.

The water just reached my knee. Because I was worried that a manhole cover would be washed away and trampled empty, I began to walk along the relatively high road in the middle of the road to our office building.

Approaching the building, I found that the original glass patio on the ground floor was completely submerged and leaked downwards. At the front desk, I saw two young colleagues sitting on the sofa and told me that they would play table tennis this afternoon. As a result, they found that it was raining hard and they were trapped here. Asked why I went back to the office, I said I heard that the computer room was flooded, so I came to see the situation.

The elevator naturally can't be used. I walked down the stairs to the basement, and the water was about 50 cm. Fortunately, no cars flooded in the underground garage. Because it rained so hard, there was also a lot of rain flowing down the ramp of the garage. I called my colleague Xin, who is in charge of power and equipment maintenance, and went into the main engine room to check together.

This mainframe room is really a "mainframe" room, which houses the IBM z series mainframe we used for software research and development. This kind of mainframe has high reliability and few problems in normal operation, and is widely used in financial institutions to support core business. But this complex big machine also has a fragile side, that is, it can run very stably and reliably without stopping; However, if it is restarted after manual shutdown, some minor faults will inevitably occur. So this kind of machine should try to avoid cold start.

In the computer room, you can see that the water surface is flush with the elevated floor, and the strong and weak lines below the floor have been flooded. The distance of 10 cm will flood the machine and cause physical damage. At this point, the machine has been shut down remotely. I saw the floor behind a machine being torn down, and I was worried that someone would step on it. I was just about to bend down and put it away. Xin immediately stopped me and said, "Be careful of getting an electric shock." Then I noticed that Xin was wearing insulating rubber shoes and looked like a professional electrician. It seems strange that I waded in shorts and sandals.

The entrance of the computer room has been built with sandbags, and the water level outside the computer room is higher than that inside the computer room, so the rain is still seeping in. Xin said that the flow of overflow water into the computer room is much smaller now. After we closed the door, the water stopped up more slowly. So, we retired from the computer room and closed the door. The water in the whole basement has stopped growing, and the people in the property are organizing pumping out. I met the person in charge of the property and asked them to make sure that the water level in the main room was no longer rising. I left my contact number and went back to the first floor.

It rained a lot less at this time, and there was less water on the ground than when I came. I knew there should be no big problem in the computer room, so I said goodbye to Xin. Two young colleagues are still at the front desk, and there is no taxi at this time; They walked out of the software park with me and took a ride to the subway station.

Only later did I know how much life and property losses were caused by the rainstorm in Beijing that day. In contrast, our computer room is flooded and looks insignificant. However, the occurrence of any event is not unexpected, but the situation we originally considered will greatly affect the decision at that time. I remember that it was in 2006, when we built this new office in the software park and decided to build a large mainframe computer room. Due to the rapid growth of our staff and the limitation of rental space, we have to locate the computer room in the basement. According to the best practice of information security risk management, it is obvious that this option greatly increases the risk. Although we think that the probability of flooding in Beijing is very low, we underestimate the capacity of urban drainage facilities. Finally, what we were worried about six years ago happened at 20 12, and now I want to test Murphy's law. Fortunately, the water level did not rise after the rain subsided, thus avoiding huge losses. Later, we also built a waterproof dike at the door as a measure to prevent and further reduce risks.

Now look at the flood control materials prepared in subways, underground garages and other places before the flood season, look at the rain warning line under the overpass and mark the position of the manhole cover, and arrange the duty in advance when the heavy rain comes, which all illustrate the growth of a city. However, this growth comes at a great cost. We all know many things in advance. Are these costs really inevitable?