Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Flood Watch

We made the national news.

Ivan the Terrible sent us 20 inches of rain in 20 hours, and gave us the worst flood in 50 years.

I woke up Saturday morning and sat in the front room drinking coffee. After a while, I started to wonder why there was so much goddamn traffic on my road.

That was when it hit me that my road had become a detour because of flooding.

It wasn’t until about an hour later, when traffic suddenly stopped, that I realized just how bad the flooding really was. There was water at the end of my street, and there were boats rowing around in the Movie Gallery parking lot. This was amazing!

Red and I went out on the town, to inspect the damage. I found one store open, and loaded up on used books to see me through the next few days of being flooded in. Then we began looking for a bar.

The only place open was across the river, and about a block from the banks. I parked out front, where it was dry. As I finished my beer, I noticed that all four tires of my car were in water. This shit was rising fast!

That’s when it hit me. Work! We’ve never been flooded before, but we’ve come close a time or two. If this was the worst flood in 50 years, then we were in for it. I paid my tab, and Red and I went for a little spin around the properties.

I was too fucking late. Six warehouses full of material were already filled with muddy river water, and there was no way to get a truck to them in time to get anything out. All I could do was wait until the water went down, and assess the damage.

Which is what I’ve been doing today. Walking around facilities with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, adding up the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of carnage, and slopping through bacteria laden river sludge that the flood and God’s wrath left behind.

Next time God decides to wash away my sins, I wish he’d use Dial.

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