Rising flood water
Drowns all land that it covers
Fish play in driveways

Thank you Clare at My Creative Cosmos for inviting me to join this wonderful challenge.

This photo was taken April 30, 2014.

As if the great freeze of January 2014 wasn’t bad enough, the following April we had a 500 year flood event and our city turned into Venice Italy overnight. As usual, I got up before the sun so I did not realize the seriousness of the flooding until I stepped outside to go to work and found a good foot of water under my house (I am on pilings so I did not have any serious damage). I took this picture while wading chest deep to check on my 80 year old Mother’s house, five streets down from mine. Her car was totaled but she was OK. Many people in the area were not so lucky. Lots of folks lost their homes and most of the homes destroyed or flooded were not in a traditional flood zone so they did not have flood insurance. It was just horrible. We had over 24 inches of rain in 26 hours. We broke every rain event record known for the area. I work for the local government so again, I was ordered to stay home and await emergency management orders. I knew there were some long days ahead for everyone once the water receded. We made international news that night. Oh joy. Just once I would like our area to be on the news for something good instead of for a catastrophe. Pictures circulated of folks peering down into a ravine filled with cars where a major road washed out and collapsed thirty feet below. What the folks in the picture did not realize at the time, revealed by the photos taken from across the wash-out, was that they were standing on a mere 4 inches of pavement overhang with absolutely nothing underneath. How’s that go, “Stupid is as stupid does”? Miraculously only one person was killed due to the fast rising water sweeping away their car and I say “only” because it could have been so much more tragic. Entire homes were washed away in mud slides or flooded to the roof line. At least 28 roads and bridges washed out or collapsed. To make matters worse, the flooding happened in the middle of the night with much of the area without power. It took the rest of the year to get the major infrastructure repairs completed. It will take even longer for those that lost everything to rebuild their lives.
Now back to that photo. Speaking of stupid; yes, I had assessed that there were no live power lines in the water; yes, I was on high alert for snakes and had a big stick in my hand. What I hadn’t counted on and you can’t see in the picture are the thousands of pissed off fire ants and spiders rafting to get above high water. “I” was above high water so suddenly “I” was very popular. Not fun. Nope, not fun at all.

OK, here is where I am going rogue. I am not going to follow the strict rules and pay it forward to five other folks. An elaborate explanation of why can be found on my Five Photos, Five Stories – Day One: Fog post if you care to read my obnoxious rant. Here are my rules: If I follow you, I admire and respect your work. If you would like to take on this challenge, please do so as I would very much like to follow what you create. I will be posting two more of these photos, haiku and stories guilt free with the hope of inspiring someone else to take a shot at it. If you take on the challenge and want to follow the original rules, I think that is great so here are what the rules are supposed to be:

The Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge rules require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph – it’s entirely up to you.

Then each day, nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.

Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command. Today, I invite (insert nominee here) to join the challenge.

I would like to give a special “Thanks” to all of the wonderful bloggers that follow and support me and especially to Clare for being so patient with me.

This is also a response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Forces of Nature which inspired a theme for my five day challenge and will be incorporated in each of the five posts.