http://lafond.patricksheehy.com/2007/08/27/aftertheflood/ General blog about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness Tue, 03 May 2011 02:19:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://lafond.patricksheehy.com/2007/08/27/aftertheflood/comment-page-1/#comment-24 Lafondblog » 2007 the year loaded with local news Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:30:32 +0000 http://lafond.patricksheehy.com/2007/08/27/aftertheflood/#comment-24 [...] SPLASH! August also brought one of the most soaking rains in state history turning brooks and streams in Southeastern Minnesota into raging torrents. My gripping account of all of this is here: <click> [...] [...] SPLASH! August also brought one of the most soaking rains in state history turning brooks and streams in Southeastern Minnesota into raging torrents. My gripping account of all of this is here: <click> [...]

]]> http://lafond.patricksheehy.com/2007/08/27/aftertheflood/comment-page-1/#comment-22 patrick1 Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:29:43 +0000 http://lafond.patricksheehy.com/2007/08/27/aftertheflood/#comment-22 IT IS NOVEMBER AND WE CANNOT yet find words to describe our feelings about these three days in August. We CAN describe what happened and above is an attempt to do so. What we cannot comprehend is our good fortune. Knowing what we know now it was just madness for us to attempt to go any further than the first farmhouse on high ground. This was in fact the kind of emergency where you bang on someone's door and ask if you can sit in their garage and wait the storm out. Heading into the night and looking for a hotel room seems to us to be the stupidist thing we could do. But we didn't know. No one did. The Park Rangers who, maybe, saved our lives had no way of knowing this wasn't localized to their immediate area. None of us realized the enormity of this disaster until late Sunday when the responders started counting the dead and missing and assessing damage that would mount into the hundreds of millions of dollars. It is, I must assume, like that for people caught in disasters. We can't watch them on TV, the reporter shouting above the din as floodwaters rise above his ankles. This was Southeastern Minnesota where all services are stretched thin all the time. A place well out of reach of the big city media. In the pitch black of that night, no one could know the flooded crossings could just as easily be washouts that would eat anything that tried to pass. All of the places we crossed that were water covered were washouts by the next morning. | P Sheehy IT IS NOVEMBER AND WE CANNOT yet find words to describe our feelings about these three days in August. We CAN describe what happened and above is an attempt to do so. What we cannot comprehend is our good fortune. Knowing what we know now it was just madness for us to attempt to go any further than the first farmhouse on high ground. This was in fact the kind of emergency where you bang on someone’s door and ask if you can sit in their garage and wait the storm out. Heading into the night and looking for a hotel room seems to us to be the stupidist thing we could do. But we didn’t know. No one did. The Park Rangers who, maybe, saved our lives had no way of knowing this wasn’t localized to their immediate area. None of us realized the enormity of this disaster until late Sunday when the responders started counting the dead and missing and assessing damage that would mount into the hundreds of millions of dollars. It is, I must assume, like that for people caught in disasters. We can’t watch them on TV, the reporter shouting above the din as floodwaters rise above his ankles. This was Southeastern Minnesota where all services are stretched thin all the time. A place well out of reach of the big city media. In the pitch black of that night, no one could know the flooded crossings could just as easily be washouts that would eat anything that tried to pass. All of the places we crossed that were water covered were washouts by the next morning. | P Sheehy

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