What a week....
If you haven't noticed, Old Man River is getting grumpy and showing those that live off his benefits that he's still got muscle to flex. The Mississippi River is in flood, which it does every year in the spring. But this year produced more rain than normal well to our north, setting up the conditions for a higher flood levels. Since the Great Flood of 1927, engineers have anticipated this. With their pencil and paper of earlier days, and their modern electronic pencils of computers, they have designed higher, stronger levees to keep the Father of Waters contained.
Gravity determines our fate in this flood. When the Mississippi is too high, the rivers that feed into it back up, unable to expel their own volumes of water. They back out of their smaller levee systems into the cotton and rice fields if the richest soil in the United States. Rainwater that falls in this great Delta cannot drain from the bathtub of levees that keep the rivers at bay. It will be mid-June before we can pull the plug and drain thousands of acres, much too late to get crops planted and grown before the cool fall weather sets in.
For the people of the Delta, flooding is nothing new. Most of our houses are built up slightly from the surrounding land. It may not even occur to the visitor that the two or three steps up to our porches are, in fact, part of a design to keep our belongings dry. The Flood of 2011, however, will likely be one for the records, possibly rivaling those set in 1927.
Preparations are being made. People have started moving out of some areas. Others, though, are focusing on the low-flood prediction. They're confident in their safety, missing the high-flood prediction. They're placing their faith in the engineering science. Mark Twain said "The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise." We would be wise to listen to those words. Science and engineering designed our levee systems to protect us. But humans packed the dirt, and that is where the purity of science and mathematics becomes stained.
"You shall see thangs, wonderful to tell" said the Blind Seer in the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou. In disaster I have seen many things, some wonderful to tell, and some horrible to recall. This week I have seen the faces of thousands of Delta residents. From the young and strong, to the oldest and most fragile of our neighbors, I have seen the face of concern and worry. Very few people in this Delta are able to remember the flood of 1927 first-hand. Many remember the flood of 1973, and they're taking few chances. Those of us too young to remember any major flood just don't know what to expect. I have seen true concern among my colleagues. I've seen doctors and hospital administrators face expensive decisions that must be made days before their towns are under threat. I've seen prudent nursing home owners decide to bear the cost of moving their patients to safety, far ahead of any flood threat. They made the morally correct decision, fully aware they may be ridiculed later if floods do not affect their towns.
But there is one image from the week that I'll carry forever. I've attended hundreds of disaster meetings in my career, making decisions that affect people's lives, and possibly even sealing their fate if things don't work out as we anticipated. This week I participated in over a dozen such meetings, all dealing with the coming flood. But one meeting this week gave me a new memory. I've never been in a disaster meeting where my own son was standing across the room. His grandfather may be a flood victim, and he's evacuating. My son was helping him pack to leave. My son's small "truck patch" farming operation will suffer during this flood, making him a victim of sorts. To see his face there, part victim, part helper....I haven't figured out all of my thoughts on that just yet. We all want our children to grow through happy formative years. Part of me despises that he's been thrown into dealing with this coming disaster. Yet part of me is glad that he is gaining the experience of what may be a record event. Perhaps in another fifty years he can convey his memories on to the next generation in their flood.
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