Remember that containment area in the back of my property? I am actually standing on Dale's yard, my neighbor.
I began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Heck it was no feeling, it was the beginning of an ache that would not go away for nearly a year.
None of us had ever seen the water come up this high. Surely it would stop raining. Surely
We did get in the car and retrace some of our steps from the day before. The water had risen fro the previous day. And it was into these houses.
In my own yard, the water was also coming up.
Never, never had water ever come into my yard. 32 years, never had water in the yard. My stomach would clench every time I looked out.Still, it was in the back, and no where near the house. We still did not think it would get any higher.
We were so comfortable with that idea that we did not even discuss it among ourselves.
Dale and Frank would go out into his yard every hour and plant a stick at the water's edge. They were marking where it was should it continue to rise. Every hour they would move the stick closer to our houses.
My stomach hurt. this is what fear feels like, I thought.
Those words are inconceivable. Past the deck.
I finally spoke the words. Do we need to go get sand bags.
That was the first sentence between us. He said no, we are fine.
That was the second sentence.
When I took this photo. My knees were barely holding me up.
I think this is when I knew.
But I thought it would just be an inch or two.
I sat on the sofa all night, waiting. Unable to do anything to protect my house. Fighting the waves of nausea.
Hoping the rain would stop. By now, I think it had. But it didn't do any good.
These pictures should be handed out to the people that say it can't happen here because it never has.
ReplyDeleteMy husband was nailing plywood over windows so we could stay during Hurricane Opal while I was packing our most important pictures and papers. I was ready to leave when he finally decided he would come with us which delayed our departure almost 2 hours and our trip went from 5 hours to almost 15 hours since the sheriff in the next county blocked the interstate to allow his people to evacuate. any long and awful stories there too. We were blessed with little damage other than having the power out for over a week, trees down, fence down and roof messed up. Our sitting on a back road as Opal passed over was scary, but they decided being on the interstate was too dangerous. were had made it into feeder bands rather than the dense center of the storm. Your pictures might help people like my husband whose mantra was we have never left before and we have been okay. Weather doesn't care what happened before.
I remember feeling that same sick sense of dread when I read your cryptic panic-striken posts last year.
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