Rain, Floods, Luck

Let me start by acknowledging all the calls, e-mails, and texts inquiring about our well being over the past few days; we absolutely appreciate it and I can assure you we are just fine as is all of our personal property, remarkably.

Let me also say that my intention in writing this is to attempt to put all of this into some sort of perspective; a perspective I definitely didn’t have as it was happening and one that I’m still trying to grasp now. I certainly don’t want to be grandiose in overstating the impact the rain and flooding had on the area here – this was not a hurricane, or a tornado, or a tsunami, or any number of other natural disasters; it was rain. A hell of a lot of rain, but it was rain. But I also don’t want to understate the magnitude of the events and certainly the tragedy that some people have gone through while trying to explain what this was – the single worst rainstorm and flooding in this area in recorded history.

From my perspective, the rain began in earnest Saturday morning. At the time I considered it nothing more than an inconvenience but as the day wore on and it refused to let up it started to get concerning. With each hour that passed I would think to myself, “this is the worst and longest torrential monsoon I’ve ever experienced.” But then it would go for another hour, and another, and each time I had to revise my metric. Still, by Saturday night as sick as I was of the rain I had no idea how bad it really was. In my cloistered world of interior home improvements I didn’t think to turn on the tv or check the internet to see how bad it was. In fact, it wasn’t until I got a text message from someone who was out of town about the flooding that I even realized the seriousness of the situation.

But even then I just assumed the flooding was occurring in the worst, most low-lying areas of the city and the rain would let up eventually. And eventually it did. But Sunday morning it started again, and again I had to revise the metric. It wasn’t even worth attempting to go outside because every effort resulted in every inch of exposed clothing getting completely soaked almost immediately. So I stayed inside trying to busy myself with the millions of things I’d left undone “until a rainy day.” Again, blissfully unaware of just how bad things had been and how bad they were going to get.

About mid-morning I looked out the window to see a constant stream of water running through the ditch in my front yard. That was immediately concerning because even in the worst rain we’ve had in the past I’ve never even seen standing water. The next hour was spent nearly constantly rounding from one window to the next trying to survey the level of the water – a shallow pond in the backyard; nothing to the south; standing water in the yard two houses to the north; water in the ditch out front getting higher. At that point I had to acknowledge the fact that we do in fact live in a floodplain and we are in fact required to maintain flood insurance – a fact that has been the subject of my ire on many, many occasions as I’ve even gone so far as to actively pursue having our neighborhood re-surveyed by FEMA in order to update their flood maps. Brown’s Creek happens to run through our backyard but up until Sunday I’d never so much as seen a drop of water in it.

It wasn’t until almost noon though that I even began to feel the full weight of what was happening. The rain let up enough for me to consider venturing outside, so I walked to the end of the driveway where I looked to the north and absolutely could not believe the sight – a river of flood water rushing through the whole of the neighborhood not more than three houses down from ours. As floored as I was, I was compelled to walk as close as I could and still couldn’t believe it – a torrent of milky brown floodwater coursing through the neighborhood. At some points it appeared to be almost two-feet deep, as high as the wheels of a truck and just below the floor level of the houses. But the frightening thing was, the further back the neighborhood went, the deeper the water got. I couldn’t see but I could only assume the river of water was running through some houses, maybe as deep as 4 feet. What I feared for my own house was a reality for several dozen other houses.

Still though, I didn’t fully embrace the situation.

I went back and put on knee-high rubber boots and hopped the fence behind my house where I could hear the rapids in Brown’s Creek. As soon as I landed on the other side of the fence I was shin deep in water. 

I walked another ten yards until the water was to the top of the boots and stood there looking out on a river of water, 30 yards wide, racing through our neighborhood.

I paused to take a picture of myself to try to capture the perspective of the depth of the water though ironically the unintentional look on my face says more about what was happening than anything.

If there’s any humor to be found in this, as I was wading through the water I was actually thinking to myself, “Ok, you’ve seen every episode of Man vs Wild; you know what Bear says about these situations: Test every step for a sink hole; keep your hands out for balance; proceed cautiously; floodwater can rise rapidly without warning; 6” is enough water to sweep an adult off their feet…” I can joke all I want about surviving shit and how awesome Bear is, but the reality is, in that situation I took a good bit of comfort out of thinking about what Bear would do.

Joking aside, the river of floodwater continued unabated for the better part of two hours. What I didn’t realize is it had been a river of floodwater for hours prior.

By mid-afternoon the rain had abated and by late afternoon most of the water had receded, leaving tons of debris and destruction behind. I set out through the neighborhood to survey the damage and just couldn’t believe it. I met a young couple who showed me through their house. They said they were doing everything they could to get all over their possessions into the attic but when the water eventually came it rushed in so suddenly they didn’t have a chance to respond. It blew open the French doors on the back of their house and was two feet deep before they could do anything. It took all their effort to get out of the house. My mind cannot comprehend how terrifying that would have been. There is no amount of preparation or planning that can possibly ready you for that situation. If I think about my own experience over the previous 24 hours – being concerned yet inconvenienced by the rain; watching the water level rise with some intrigue; deciding to move some stuff in the house to higher locations; packing a bag in case I had to leave… even with all of that I was so ignorant to what was really going on and so were all of these people in the neighborhood, right up until the water broke through their back door and everything in their life changed forever.

With the water fully receded it was mind-boggling how bad the whole situation was in their house. A line of wet debris and mud was caked two feet above the floor through the entire house. The chain link fence in their backyard was completely bowled over. The smell of gasoline from lawnmower cans in their garage was intoxicated. Everything that had been touched by the water was ruined. And that was just one house; there were dozens of others on this street alone, and dozens of houses that were worse off.  

Then there was our house, maybe two hundred yards away with just a few inches of water in the crawl space. Nothing more than that. I still can’t fathom the luck.

And still, when I went to bed Sunday night I had no idea how bad the whole thing truly was. It wasn’t until I woke up Monday morning and watched the news and saw acre after acre of land under standing water; entire neighborhoods swallowed up; 13,000 people without power; one of two water treatment plants out of commission…

What happened in our neighborhood was just a microcosm for what happened all over the city, and the crazy thing was, this neighborhood was fortunate – the water had actually receded; there are still entire sections of town under standing water, without power, and without drinking water.

And here we are in a goddamn floodplain and our house got a few drops of water in the crawl space. Unbelievable.

I went through the neighborhood Monday afternoon to see what could be done. It was amazing to see how people were coping. Hundreds of friends and family came out to help and even as people were throwing out all the furniture they owned, they were happy. They were happy they were ok. It was amazing.

I've heard the phrase "shared human experience" used before and each time I've hated it because it's usually written by some uber altruistic hippie about an experience that, given the choice, no human would ever want to share with another. But at this point I'm struggling to find a better way to describe this. Everyone here now has a story about the rain and the floods, whether they were directly affected by it or not. Everyone knows where they were and what they were going through and they'll remember that forever and they’ll tell that story forever. It's the same with any major event like this - it's the shared human experience. It's amazing to walk through the neighborhood and see someone whose house has been destroyed and see the look on their face – a look of exhaustion and disbelief but one that still says, "I've lost everything but at least I'm ok; it's just stuff." You can only think to yourself, "I can't possibly understand what you're going through but I want you to believe it'll be alright," and it will. That’s the shared experience. Or you share a smile with the neighbor whose house was unbelievably unaffected just like yours and the smile is not spiteful or cynical or selfish; it is simply an understanding that says, "We are so lucky; we are unbelievably lucky." That's what it is to have one of those uber altruistic hippie shared human experiences and the ridiculous thing is, despite the horribleness of it all, it's comforting.