!Flood
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agk's diary
6 April 2025 @ 01:39 UTC
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written on Evy's GPD MicroPC
while it rains steadily
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A bluegrass concert in Beattyville this weekend
would have raised money for victims of last month's
catastrophic floods. Flood relief concert was
canceled. Venue flooded.
Yesterday on the radio I heard there's floodwater
in downtown Clay City. It's expected to rise for
five more days. Angie Gable put on a playlist, left
the radio station an hour early to try to get home.
Naphina's kids splashed happily in the lake their
yard became. Then it merged with the creek, a muddy
torrent full of debris, potentially deadly. It
poured into the basement of their ninety-year-old
house. Now it's raining again.
June lives across town from me, one street over
from Naphina. He couldn't get home. Meter-deep
water blocked the only road to his neighborhood.
He's in a play all weekend. He slept somewhere.
Roommate bikes to work at Wal-mart in rain, bikes
home in rain, puddles ever deeper.
Thursday, we huddled in the downstairs bathroom.
Tornadoes tore a path through our town. Klaxons
sounded all over the ridge at 0300. It wasn't all
clear for 45 minutes. Then sirens were five ambu-
lances or firetrucks, going to rescue my neighbors.
Evy fed daughter, put her back to bed. I drove to
the hospital, where my teens had huddled 45 minutes
in their tornado shelter, then returned to their
rooms to sleep. Hospital phones couldn't call out
all shift. Hard to plan discharges like that. Storm
water killed a teen's memaw.
Rain falls, trees fall, power's out, it's back on,
more rain falls, water rises, debris blocks
culverts and storm drains, water rises more, falls
a little, power's out again.
Rain falls in Gaza too. At least we have dry
blankets and food. Cinnamon roll and milk, toast
and peanut butter, soup, beans and rice, oranges.
No one's hunting us.
Thursday night Noah and I walked and talked. Water
stood everywhere, fifteen centimeters and deeper.
The creek was a brown torrent. We noted the debris
we passed. Five bridges were fine. Thousands of
earthworms labored across the pavement.
In places the creek bank was collapsed or under-
mined. Storm water glugged steadily through a
damaged sewer manhole. Noah showed me a picture on
his smartphone, the bridge to his house, one state
east, submerged. He headed home with plans to drive
across a field.
Today Evy, first daughter, and I walked the same
path. The first bridge's now off-kilter, a footing
eroded away. Large debris covers its deck. Asphalt
road to the next bridge undermined. A chunk of road
washed away. A sanitary sewer cracked open. A tree
on a house. A muddy torrent.
First daughter's daycare sent out a text alert.
Their phones and internet are out indefinitely.
The concrete floor of our garage, entirely covered
with drops of water. Humidity condensed on it. I
mopped up as much as I could, placed fans. Musty
mildew and mold want to grow. I beat them back. The
battle will continue day after day.
Noah tells me about the time he found a human eye-
ball in the gutter outside the clinic we started
years ago in New Orleans. He didn't know what to do
about it. He kicked it down the storm drain. That
was the day he decided to move away, never return.
Rain falls, creek rises, humidity condenses, tor-
nadoes blow, infrastructure degrades and breaks. We
watch dumbly, wait for horsemen to hang hats, take
off their boots a spell.
