While the others in the house were still sleeping, I headed on down to the local Starbucks to pick up my email this morning and see the on-line news for back home. Every channel here is just non-stop hurricane coverage so I had no idea what’s been happening in the rest of the world as not one another thing has been mentioned. Talk about overkill.
When I got back, Kory and Connie were outside moving things away from the house that could damage windows in high winds, or float away in a flood. Connie kept telling us she had sand bags and not to worry, but the news said there will be historic flooding, so I figured she needed more than just the three little sand bags she’s used in the past when the water level from her creek reached the house. I’m imagining the house will be surrounded by water and more preparations were needed.
Kory and I drove to the nearest Home Depot to find sand bags, but they were not-surprisingly, sold out. We bought a big container of thick plastic bags and decided to make our own. Connie’s stream just flooded last week. The good news is, it left a lot of piles of sand on the other side of her creek that we could use now, but the bad news is, the ground is still saturated from the 13” of rain they’ve had already this month, so the flooding will be more fierce. (Photo below is of the stream before the rain...)
I think Connie’s in denial about what may come her way so Kory and I provided the overkill preparations the news was warning everyone to take. “I’ve been here 32 years and I’ve seen it all…” is Connie’s response to everything. “I grew up in Indiana and we had floods all the time, nothing is new to me…” she says. But when I ask her if she’ll evacuate her house if there’s two feet of standing water in her basement (where we are sleeping), she just gives me a blank stare. It obviously doesn’t compute, what this hurricane could mean. I’m trusting God it won’t be as bad as they say, but if it is, I’m sure glad she’s not riding it out alone. Her idea of “preparations” were just to put the door rug up against the screen door and set the old milk box next to it, to keep the water out. Kory, on the other hand, duct taped some plastic about three feet up both her basement doors, then set about two feet of sand bags that Kaleb and I made, stacked in front of them. He sealed the inside of the doors as well and we wedged bath towels between the screen doors and the house door. I am not 100% certain it will hold out all the water if we get the ten inches they say we can get, but it will hold better than the door mat and milk carton, I’m sure.
After lunch we thought we’d kill a few hours by going to see a movie at the theatre so we headed just a few miles down the road to do just that. The rain was coming down pretty hard though, and after we drove through a few low spots on the road that had a lot of standing water, we realized it might not be so smart to be gone from home for a few hours, risking the chance of not making it back. We stopped off and bought a few more snacks, then headed back to Connie’s. She thought we were being wimps, but I figured it was better safe than sorry. We don’t know all the alternative roads back to her house if one road was closed, and the GPS might not pick up a signal if the clouds are too thick, so we thought it was wise. I was bummed though we didn’t have an outing today, but I guess hurricanes do that to people’s plans.
The local news told us today because of the saturated soils, even just getting two inches of rain will cause flooding, so I can’t imagine what 10 inches will do. We moved the car to higher ground, over at the neighbor’s driveway, but I don’t know if it will be high enough. Should be an interesting night.
When the lights started flickering, we asked Connie to get out those candles she said she had plenty of, just so we wouldn’t have to go hunting for them in the dark. She dug around in a drawer and gave me five packs of birthday cake candles and said, “See, I told you I have plenty….” These are the things that make me realize she’s no longer connecting all the dots. I’m glad we are here.
As we watched the news non-stop to see how the hurricane was progressing, we actually got to experience the “Emergency Broadcast System” that the TVs are always just “testing” in our neck of the woods. Here, it was real. The screen went blank, the beeps were loud and a voice came on telling everyone that tornados were spotted in certain areas – including the one we are in! We all headed down to the basement as they said we should do, but we’d already taken all our stuff up to the top floor because of the potential flooding in the basement. The water level at that point was right up next to the house and flooding was possible at any moment, so we wondered where we were really the safest. If the roof blew off from high winds and the basement flooded, we had no where else to go, so we just prayed. We weren’t afraid or freaking out, we were just perplexed. Kaleb thought the whole thing was pretty exciting and I think secretly hoping something dramatic would happen. We asked God’s hand of protection on Connie’s house, especially when the tornadoes were reported to be right near her place. We were at peace, but still glued to the TV, and fortunately, we never lost power.
Robbie called about 11pm to tell us he’d been out of power for about an hour, so we were thankful we still had electricity. Kaleb fell asleep on the couch about midnight, Kory went to bed about one and I’m still awake with the TV on, watching this thing unfold.
Sunday morning update: The creek level went up six feet from before the storm (Kory made a measuring rod) but this morning it had receded quite a bit during the night and we didn’t flood. (Photo above is after it was down a few feet - it was well over the bridge last night.) All the neighbors did flood though – even the ones on higher ground. No big branches or trees down or damage around Connie’s place – so Hallelujah for answered prayer! Others weren’t so blessed. I “slept” on the couch with the TV on all night just so I’d hear if there were more emergency broadcast messages, but all was quiet and life is calm after the storm. Thank you, Lord. What a ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment