Observations of a Flood, Part 1

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.

Sounds & Smells...

Do you like the smell of grass?

What about the smell of freshly tilled dirt?

Or the smell of trees, especially the heady smell of freshly cut trees?

Do you like the sound of the silence that you can hear way out in the country?  No noise from cars, no houses with their air-conditioned hum.  Just you and the wind and nature's sounds.

Somewhere in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia this weekend, an EMT, a firefighter, or a police officer experienced every one of those sensations that we enjoy.  Our responder, though, didn't get to experience those sensations in a pleasing way.

Arriving first, the paramedic's memories of those comforting smells clashed with the sights her eyes were seeing.  The firefighter's brain sought to fill the void of silence that his ears were telling him existed right then.  Our paramedic's skin felt the warm sunshine, bringing memories of spring childhood days.  The landmarks they shared just hours before while responding to another call, are now gone, vanished with the wind.  These public servants must now bring quick order to this tornado of chaos, holding back fears of the fate of their own families.

In a moment, their world bowed to, and broke under, the demands of nature.  In days, their world will settle into a new routine.  In weeks, they will see renewal.  In years, they will see healing.  The people under their protection will regain their footing, and the community will survive.

Several years from now, on a cold morning, our EMT will be called to the home of a grandmother, wrapped in a blanket and disheveled from her illness, and the EMT's memory will see another grandmother wrapped in a blanket holding her injured grandchild amid the rubble of a home.  On a highway one spring afternoon, the clean smell of pine will trigger our firefighter's memories of that terrible day, as he gently untangles a crumpled car from a teen's broken limbs.  Our police officer on a routine summer night's patrol will be tormented by the flashes of lightning and peals of thunder breaking the night's silence as a summer storm rolls over the land.

The members of this trio are heroes to many.  Yet these heroes carry the memory of many lifetime's worth of tragedy.

To themselves, they are as frail and human as all of us.

Shapes....

Circles, ovals, rectangles...

From the circular speaker came the voice of the dispatcher, sending us to a rectangular house.

Through the rectangular door we rushed, with our somewhat rectangular bags.

Our patient was on the long rectangle of a couch.  Circles were on his face...his blue-tinged mouth gasping for a breath, his wide, rounded eyes showing the fear.

From the red rectangular bag quickly came a green cylinder, containing the breath of life - oxygen.

Over on the oval table were more shapes, big and small.

A rectangular plastic bag, and a silver-colored rectangle cigarette roller.  Next to them, the dinner-plate sized circle of an ashtray, dotted with the smaller circles of cigarette butts. 

The circle of a life, perhaps turning into a downward spiral.

Blog Rewind - April 28, 2007

A few weeks ago, I re-posted my first-ever blog post from 2007.  I wasn't on Blogger at the time, but I saved the old posts and decided to celebrate my blogging birthday by reviewing some of those first year's writings.

The following was posted on April 28, 2007 - four years ago today.  It is titled "36 Years and 18 days", and I'll let it stand for itself, no further explanation needed.

36 Years and 18 Days

At 36 years and 18 days of age, a man I wish today could be standing beside me was taken from this world. I carry his name, as does his grandson, who shares far more personality traits with his grandfather than he will ever know.

I was 13 at the time, almost 14. Losing the benefit of a father at that tender age is sobering, and daunting. A young man suddenly has thrust upon him the responsibilities of manhood; with no more footprints to follow.

So many years ago another man's 36th year & 18th day brought just another day. The day started by letting his son sleep a little later than normal, choosing to run the son's morning paper route on his own. As that day pushed back the previous night over his head, he made the rounds flipping papers onto little old ladies' porches so they wouldn't have to walk out to the street to get it. He visited friends and family that day while his son was in school. Later in the afternoon as his son was cutting grass, an alarm was sounded about town - FIRE! A conflagration had erupted, and this man along with many others had answered the calling to protect his neighbors. He saw his son that day, just once as that building burned violently. His son asked him a simple question, to which he shook his head with a simple "no" as he rounded the corner. Minutes later, with father and son no more than a few yards apart, the building finally gave in to the wishes of gravity and fell.

For me, my 36th year and 18th day is April 30, 2007.  How will my 36th year and 18th day start? Will there be anything different? More importantly, how will the next day, 36 and 19 start? How will it feel to be older than the greatest man I ever knew? How strange will it be?

Where are the faint traces of old, worn footprints for me to follow?

Easter...

(Written while listening to to Nearer, My God, To Thee...click and listen, especially to the last verse beginning at 3:30.  Wow, just plain wow...)

What does Easter mean, to you?  Is it a spring holiday?  Is it sharing time with friends and family, maybe a small family reunion?

Go back a couple thousand years, consider the events of a week in Jerusalem.  A man - proclaiming himself to be the King of the Jews and challenging the religious establishment that had lasted hundreds if not thousands of years - this man entered the city on a donkey.  This peasant carpenter's son though, had the religious leaders scared.  He healed people.  He proclaimed himself as the living water, the bread of life, the Son of God.  Blasphemous!  How dare He say such things.  He must be silenced, the leaders thought.  They plotted, schemed.  But the people knew that this carpenter was no peasant.  He offered something refreshing, a new covenant.  They had seen the miracles with their own eyes.  Lazarus was alive, lepers were clean and healed, blind could see because of this Bethlehem carpenter.  He had a following, and people believed in him.  How could they not, with what they had seen?  Until now, they had lived under generations of Mosaic law.  That same prophets that gave them law also told of a messiah.  The people recognized this carpenter as that Messiah...He was the real deal for them.  But He presented a direct challenge to the "establishment" and those in power.  Their self-interest in preserving that power clouded their ability to see who He really is.

The people were rejoicing in His coming to Jerusalem.  They wanted Him to challenge the religious leaders.  They expected Him to overthrow their rule and establish His kingdom.  He would, not as people expected though.  He would, just as prophecy said He would.

In days, the people would see the drama shift from a triumphal entry into the city to that of a horror of mockery, torture, humiliation and death.  The promise would be stripped bare, beaten to near death (link to medical article written by a Mississippi physician), then sent on a forced march through the city to a rocky outcrop near the edge of town.  He would have nails driven through his wrists and feet, hoisted high upon a cross for the entire town to witness, then left to die between two thieves.  But even then, he challenged the religious establishment by telling one thief that they would be in Paradise together that very day.  When He breathed his last though, people knew this was no charismatic carpenter, nor was he the local psychotic.  The sky went black, the earth trembled beneath the city.  Even the religious leaders had to ask themselves what they had unleashed when the great temple's veil into the Holy of Holies was torn from the top down.

But....the witnesses were human.  They saw Him die.  Dead, just like the two thieves beside Him.  The healer, the miracle worker was gone.  The hope they had quickly faded.  His followers hid in fear their own lives would be demanded next by the religious leaders.  Hope was gone.  It was finished.

But had they forgotten the prophecies?  The leaders hadn't...they posted guards at His grave, just to make sure.

A couple of days later, because there hadn't been enough time to prepare His body, some ladies went to the tomb.  I can imagine it was like going back to the grave of one of our own loved ones, a few days after a funeral.  A long drive, still grasping for ways to fill the new void in your life.  It's a somber trip, knowing that we'll see the fresh pile of dirt, covered over with flowers from friends.

When the ladies got to the tomb though, they were baffled.  Two people, in radiant white clothing were in the now open tomb.  "What is this, who are you?", the ladies ask.  My sarcastic mind wants to think the two messengers probably looked at each other, rolled their eyes, then looked back at the ladies and said something like, "Are yall really surprised at this?  Didn't He tell you He'd come back from this grave?  Had yall given up on Him that quickly???"

The truth is, we still give up that quickly and easily.  We get "religious" and stuck in our ruts, trying to do the things/actions that others (leaders?) tell us we need to do to be right with the church...etc etc etc.  I could go on....  But the truth is that that New Covenant is ALIVE!  He's waiting for us, He wants us.  He's told us "the time is coming when I will make a new covenant with them...for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31)

Don't give up!  Ever!!!  You can't out-sin God.  Nothing you do surprises Him.  All He asks is that you love Him, and put Him first in your life.  Does being saved mean we'll never sin?  HA!  No, we'll sin...it's in our nature.  But He understands.  He really does.....

It's Friday....

A Historical Note...

 

View of Greenville, MS, nine days after the beginning of the 1927 Mississippi River Flood.  Photo from MS Dept of Archives & History Digital Archives

"Levee broke at ferry landing Mounds, Mississippi eight a.m.  Crevasse will overflow the entire Mississippi Delta." ~ those were the dreadful words wired from Army district engineer Major John Lee to General Edgar Jadwin, head of the Army Corps of Engineers, 84 years ago today.  That telegram announced the beginning of the Great Flood of 1927.

While true statistics may never be known, The National Safety Council estimated deaths in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta from the 1927 flood to be near 1,000 people.  185,495 people were directly affected in Mississippi, from Rosedale to Greenwood to Yazoo City and south to Vicksburg.  Almost 42,000 homes were flooded, 22,000 buildings destroyed, and another 62,000 were damaged.

The calamity's genesis was months prior, in the fall of 1926, with torrential recurrent rains falling over the northern Mississippi Valley.  Snowfall that gathered over the winter began to melt with the advance of Spring in 1927, which also brought more rain to the southern Mississippi Valley.  The water was gathering.

The Mounds Landing levee failure, near Scott, MS, was the first of almost 150 levee failures along the Mississippi River.  Geographic scars of the deluge at Mounds Landing are still - although barely - visible.  3000 feet of levee failed, releasing a flow of water estimated to have been twice that of Niagara Falls.  Ultimately, 27,000 square miles of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas were inundated.  In Mississippi, all of Washington, Sharkey, Humphreys, and Issaquena counties were flooded, along with parts of Bolivar, Sunflower, Leflore, Yazoo, and Warren counties.  At the flood's height, the Mississippi River spread to 60 miles wide (5 to 10 times wider than its current levee boundaries).

Unlike most other natural disasters that dispel most of their energy in one major blow, the Mississippi River never stops.  The flood of 1927 did not "happen" in the span of a day or two.  Flood waters began to recede months later.

As we contemplate our participation in the upcoming New Madrid hazard zone National Level Exercise, we should pause to look to our own history of disasters.  From one disaster to another, we have rebuilt bigger, higher, and better, just as the river engineers did before and after 1927.  Survivors of Mississippi's benchmark hurricane, Camille, fell victim to their own feelings of disaster-resistance 36 years later.  And much like the levee builders did in the early 20th century, much faith was placed in human ingenuity's attempts to control Nature when engineers rebuilt taller and stronger levees around New Orleans after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.  We easily recall human saga that resulted from days of flooding following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Yet, has the fog of eight decades blinded us to the months of flooding that occurred in our own Delta area?

The area of Mississippi affected in 1927 still has about the same population, with estimates ranging from 160,000 to 180,000, occupying some 60,000 housing units.  Although the population hasn't changed much in nearly ninety years, a multitude of social aspects have.  On the positive side, our population is more well informed, information travels faster and is more readily available, and we are more mobile.  Armed with information and mobility, we are able to evacuate more easily.  That mobility is a two-edged sword, though; we will want to come home more quickly.  On the negative side, our dependence has grown.

The movement and needs of a great mass of population present challenges to those who graciously open their cities to us; Mississippi isn't known as the Hospitality State by accident.  We bring with us the maladies of a society that is far less prepared, and far less resilient.  While not longing for the severe living conditions of the Delta in the 1920's, our people today are more dependent on others for their health and welfare than were our not-so-distant ancestors.  An organized food industry has turned the family garden plot into basketball courts, swimming pools, and playgrounds; our daily sustenance arrives via truck.  Advanced healthcare has given us the ability to live longer with a host of diseases that once claimed the lives of the young; but it quickly abandons us within the grasp of Death when disaster separates us from our medicine men.  Where we once were dependent largely upon ourselves, have we have now laid that resilience upon the alter of convenience in our current age?

We are accustomed to the pace of our modern life.  Stresses of meeting work, social, and family schedules and demands take their toll on our overall well-being.  That same rapid pace that slowly wears us down also engrains in us a desire to seek quick resolution to disaster's obsticals.  We will want our disaster-disrupted lives to be rapidly returned to normal, with no convenience left out. 

History will be repeated.  The Mississippi Delta will flood again, in spite of our grand efforts to prevent it from ever happening again.  Taller, stronger levees perform their seasonal dance with the Father of Waters, which constrained by those same levees is now allowed to move more quickly and carry more water.  Our own Gulf Coast is rebuilding to match the height of Katrina's storm surge, repeating the phrase heard after Camille that it won't be that bad again.  The New Madrid fault will slip beneath the Mid-South, unleashing a calamity that will rival all of the great disasters of our time.

Are we really that well prepared?  Or are we that forgetful?

Marshally Ramsey - The Storm

Marshall Ramsey is a political cartoonist and news-talk radio host in Jackson, MS.  He has a great talent for capturing the moment in his cartoons - whether it be political drama or human tragedy.  Marshall is equally talented with the pen.  I invite you to read his most recent writing, The Storm.

Dispensing care in the Mississippi Delta....

St. Paddy's Weekend

We rolled the streets of Jackson in green with the 29th Annual Mal's St. Paddy's Parade this weekend, and it was as fun as ever.  We meet up with a group of friends down and throw responsibility to the wind for a few hours, and it is well worth it!

Therapist and I needed the break too.  We hadn't been out of town since we got married a couple of months ago.  Warm spring sunshine had been teasing us at work, and we were itching for a road-trip.

Enjoy the slide-show!

Looking back...

My first venture into writing in a blog/journal style was immediately following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when I was deployed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for response and recovery efforts in the days before the storm, and for months after.  I wrote a series of ongoing emails to friends and family, so they would be aware of my situation, and as a way to record my own thoughts and observations during that time.

Sometime in 2007, on another website, I started writing "publicly".  I hadn't fully jumped into the blog world until I decided to start this blog in October, 2008.  Recently, I took time to look back to those early days, way back four years ago, to find my old writings.  I discovered that today, March 17, is my blogging birthday!  So, to celebrate, I've decided to share some of those early posts with you.  In the coming months, I'll share others from 2007.

These first two were posted on the same day, March 17, 2007.  They reflect my thoughts on two rescue calls we made sometime near that date.

6:36 AM, Alone

6:36am, and a wonderful night's sleep is broken by the dispatcher's voice through the pager.  Just down the street, an unknown medical emergency, the caller hung up but sounded very distraught.  Only one thing causes such reactions at 6:36am.  Someone has died.  Alone, in a room, unable to plea for help.  The wails of a mother who found her adult child still echo...the miracles of modern medicine rendered unimportant...

What was just hours ago a quiet street is filled with the cars of those paying their respects, those who were shocked by the news, and mournful family members from other places.

The rituals of death will be this family's friend for the coming days, then, again, someone will be alone...

What do those eyes see?

"Rescue 1 - child vs car on a county road"

A young boy and his brother were only looking to help an elderly gentleman with yard chores, but he already had help so he sent them on their happy-go-lucky sunny-Saturday way.

One brother's eyes now see something I can't see.  But his eyes saw us, I guess.  Or were they seeing something else?  Something much more bright and fair, or more dark and sinister?  They weren't focused on us, but to somewhere, further beyond - through - us, to something we cannot know yet.  Those eyes weren't focused on the deputies, or the undertakers.  Maybe (I hope) his eyes couldn't see his parents, from whom I had to turn my eyes and hide them behind tinted glasses...as we his were hid behind the white cotton sheet, clean and bright against the dark pavement.

What do those young eyes see?

Personal Privilege

I think this will be a first for this blog....but I want to take a moment of personal privilege and ask you to visit the Caring Bridge site for my young niece.  She was born with cerebral palsy, and will be having extensive orthopedic and muscular surgery to mitigate some of the effects of the CP.

Three blonde ladies have stolen my heart.  I'm married to one.  My niece and her twin sister are the other two.  Take a moment to visit, if you will.

Thank you.

Swag

Conference swag, should be quite useful for the pool this summer.

Heroes doing a job

We regard these men and women as "heroes", but they'd say they were just doing a job, and scared to death while they were doing it.  The truth is, there aren't many of them around any more, and we need to learn as much as we can before their voices pass into history.  Watch....

New Shoes!

We ordered each of us pair of Vibram FiveFinger Bikila LS shoes after a friend purchased a similar pair.  We weren't too sure about them at first, and did an appropriate amount of research before ordering.  These things are COMFORTABLE!  It's what this tenderfoot needed...light, comfy, and easier on the feet than being barefooted.  Therapist says she's wearing them to work...that should get some interesting looks from the residents at the nursing home.  I'm looking forward to summer with these shoes.

A Digital Life...

A lot of my digital life is tucked away on some nameless, faceless server in Google's domain.  My blogs, my email, some documents, my contacts, my calendar, an experimental website that hasn't been shared yet, heck even a phone number are all under Google's umbrella.

Last weekend Google had a hiccup.  It seems that around 150,000 GMail users couldn't access their accounts - absolutely no part of their Google life.  Google has stated that they're working to resolve the problem, and that all the data does exist and will be restored.  That may well be true, and for those users who were affected, I hope it is.  Thankfully, my account and my data weren't in that group.

The event has caused me to reconsider how I structure my virtual world.  It is very nice to have fewer papers, smaller filing cabinets, and years of financial and legal data stored on a device the size of my thumb.  But what about those more fluid things like the calendar, email, and contacts?  Where do I turn if they're suddenly not available to me?  Have you asked yourself that question?  Think about your contact list...when was the last time you picked up an old-fashioned phone book to look up someone's number?

Last night the emails out on Google's servers was downloaded safely to a hard drive in my house, along with contacts and at least a portion of my calendar (the important parts).

Now there is a decision to make.  Do I jump off the Good Ship Google?  Or do I increase the frequency of data backups?  Not only should I backup the data more often, to mitigate another Google snafu, but there's this line in Google's user agreement:  Google reserves the right to terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.  Hmm, makes one think, doesn't it?

In the short term, I've set up an email on one of the domains that I own.  While I haven't decided to make the migration to that new email, I've put a life raft in the water, so to speak.  I'm looking into options to move my blogs to another host, with cost being a major factor in my decision.  Calendars, contacts, and online document storage are another issue that I haven't quite resolved yet.  If I choose to switch over to new services, you'll be the first to know.

Do you have an "emergency plan" if your online presence became unavailable to you?  Have you backed up your information regularly?  Think about the volume of data - years' worth of contacts, emails (which may include bills, proofs-of-payment, etc.), work or personal calendar items....what happens if your lose it?

A helpful link, if you're a GMail user and would like to back up your GMail: Lifehacker.com - Back Up Your GMail the Easy or Cheap Way

Notes from a Funeral, revisited

I attended a funeral today, and was left with one thought based on something the good reverend said during his message.  He referred to the "absence" we feel when we've lost a loved one.

Isn't it more accurate that we're "absent" from Heaven while we're here?  We counsel the bereaved to imagine the deceased as a loved one on an extended journey, hopeful of the promise of a future reunion.  But aren't we - the living - the ones who are really on that hypothetical journey?

Just a thought...

A Must Read

This comes from another blogger that's in emergency medicine.  A must read if you're in the lifesaving business, or if you'd just like to see a peek into our world.  Click this link:  Twenty, at Rescuing Providence

Lake Village Road Trip

We took advantage of the great weather and took a rambling trip to Lake Village, Arkansas today. The main reason for the trip was to visit this funky little home-furnishings dealer, but we wound up taking a look around town too. The town sits on Lake Chicot, which afforded us a few great photo opportunities. Enjoy!

List of medications...

When we go out on a rescue call, one of the major points of information we try to get from the patient or family is a current list of medications being taken.  Sometimes patients refuse forget to tell us about some of their medical history, the medication list gives us more clues to work with.

A while back, we had a patient with a number of chronic health issues, and the accompanying host of medications.  I found this little item, sitting right alongside the prescriptions.  Do we add this to our list of current medications??