The Flood of '06

We are in the news. Well, not really, but almost not quite. Last week it rained and rained--we had a tropical storm that just sat above us in the heavens and deluged us with rain. On Tuesday my friend Becca brought her new baby Leigha home from the hospital, so our Becca and I drove the 25 miles to her home to admire Leigha. It rained all the way there. On the way home, I thought, "wow, this is really getting to be a lot of rain" as Becca and I whooshed through huge patches of deep pools of water in the road. Later that evening, Joe, the baby's grandfather, called to make sure I'd gotten home o.k. We'd seen a farm that looked like it was beginning to drown and the rain hadn't stopped. "Uh, Joe, what about the Snake Creek Road?" I queried. "Timothy has to drive that to college tomorrow."

"Oh, not to worry," reassured Joe. It's nice and high, and on our farm we'll get lots of water, but the Snake Creek Road? No big deal."

I slept poorly that night, hearing helicopters and deluges of rain, rain, rain. Timothy left for school about 6:30. 10 minutes later the phone rang. "Uh, Dad, what should I do? There are a million rocks and mudslides on the road." "Just be careful," reassured Tim. The phone rang again. "It's pretty bad out here, Dad." "Yea? Well, go slowly and carefully--you have lots of time." 7:10 the car pulled back in the driveway. Timothy had stopped to use the oncoming lane and an SUV driver stopped. "Go back! The bridge in Franklin Forks is gone!"

Franklin Forks. That's the place where our little creek with the falls runs over. It made national news. Our little creek completely washed away not only the footbridge, but Route 29 (Snake Creek Road). A few minutes later the phone rang. "Lyn, we need counselors for flood victims! They stayed at the Baptist church which has been turned into a Red Cross Shelter!!" We began getting the news. The road I had gone on just 12 hours earlier was closed. All roads coming into Montrose were closed. We frantically called Rosie, Rob and Helen Clare.
"You can't come! There's no open roads!" Then we buzzed down to the shelter, which by this time had things well under control.

Having the second highest home for miles around means the water just drains away. Everything in nearby Binghamton, New York came to a screeching halt. The mighty Susquehanna overflowed. Timothy's workplace is flooded. No idea when it will be back to business. The college closed and turned into a shelter. Today Rosie (who finally got here on Thursday) and I drove to Binghamton to pick our sister Jan up from the airport. On the way home we blinked back tears as we saw homes swimming in water, businesses surrounded by ponds of water, a mobile home on it's side, trees uprooted and huge sections of road completely drowned in water. Other sections of the road simply dropped off into creeks and the Susquehanna. Incomprehensible. Our own little Katrina right in our backyard--just 10-25 miles from us is near complete devastation.

Jan made an interesting comment. "Somehow anything in excess turns to tragedy. Warmth in excess is a raging fire. Water, the substance of our bodies, in excess brings devastation. Wind, instead of cooling and refreshing, tears apart . . ." And the list goes on. It brought new meaning to Jesus calming the waves and being the Lord over creation. Just give us 5 days of driving rain and our efforts are futile.

Food for thought . . .