January 19, 2012

Flood Warning!

Good evening!

It has been a really busy here, in my little hometown. We have been dealing with the first day of a very heavy rainstorm, and man has it been a doozy! It is expected to rain throughout the next week, and even though it has only rained hard one day, there has been flooding all over town already. The newscasters are calling this a 40 year event, it happens so rarely. Matter of fact, the street I live on is really flooded – so much so that it is closed, and most of it has been evacuated – SCARY!! My sweetie helped our neighbors fill sandbags, and thankfully our condo is safe for now, we are on a little bit higher ground than most of the other homeowners in our area, so I think we will be alright.

While at the office today, I, along with two of my co-workers, decided to go for a little walk to see what kind of flooding was happening. We knew that the creek that runs along side the hospital had crested, and was flooding the main back street into the hospital, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.

I am not sure exactly how to describe this picture, but normally there is at least a 10-15 foot drop here, some grass, and a very light creek that runs under the hospital. Obviously, not today!

This is a picture of where the creek that runs alongside the back of the hospital. It normally runs within the two rows of trees pictured here. I have worked at the hospital for over 11 years, and I have NEVER seen the creek get this high before.

Here is the same overflowing creek, but this is the park that sits alongside the creek. What you can’t see is that this water is so high that all of the picnic tables are completely submerged, and off to the right, which is not shown in the picture, there is a building that is about 1/4 submerged. Sad! This is usually the place we take our walking breaks! It is usually so peaceful here.

Here is half of the stairway that leads down to this park. The other half is underwater!

Here is the creek right behind my little building at the hospital.

It is crazy fast, and sounds beautifully loud. It would be fun to be able to go kayaking in the middle of my workday here!! LOL!! 😉

I feel bad for all of these trees. There is so much debris being carried in the swift moving creek, that I am sure that these poor trees are just getting battered!!

It is kind of hard to see here, but this is a large trunk of a broken tree that has been brought downstream and is just banging into this bridge. Eventually so much water was coming over the bridge walls, that the police ended up cordoning off this section and closed the street down.

It is amazing how voluminous one rain storm can make all of these creeks around here. I am hoping that the water will slowly start to recede now that we have had a few hours of clear skies, but I hear we have a second rainstorm hitting tomorrow. EEK!! AND, working at the hospital, they have activated a disaster code, so all of staff are working 12 hour shifts, 24/7 this weekend. It is going to be a LOOOOOONG week until next weekend. I pray that I get to have at least one day off this week, I am most definitely going to need a break!!

Anyway, I will keep you posted on how things are going. My prayers go out to all of the families whose homes are truly affected with all of this flooding, and I thank God that he has kept my family and my hairy four-legged girls safe!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)