Flood of 2016

The flooding in south Louisiana has no name... not sure why... they're just calling it the flood of 2016...   It was almost funny... I got up Friday August 12th...  It had rained all night... but I didn't have a clue what was coming... we've had rain and rain and more rain many times....  the area where we live isn't even considered a flood zone... more than 80% of the homes that were flooded including us had no flood insurance because we aren't in a flood zones... they're calling this a 100 year freak flood because its the kind of thing that doesn't happen in 100 plus years... but it happened... and to be honest... I don't know if I'll ever feel safe... Not whining... I am grateful that Richard, BG and I are all fine and no one in our family got flooded...

That Friday I looked out the back door... water in the yard but that's not unusual... I called my friend Dale though who does live in a flood zone area and left a voice mail... that they should come to the house if they needed...  I didn't know she and her family had already evacuated...   Just about an hour later I had to call Dale back... again I got voice mail... left a message apologizing but that I didn't think we could provide a safe shelter... that I was afraid we would soon be taking in water as it was an inch or so from coming in the back door...  I called the Office of Emergency Preparedness... They advised us that we should shelter in place... I guess the Office of Emergency Preparedness was as ill equipped to know what to do as we were...  A lot of people had to be taken out by boat and they lost their cars because they didn't evacuate...  The people I talked to seemed to think I was panicking needlessly...  

A short while later when the water started coming in I told Richard we had to go... I was scared to shelter in place as it hadn't been that long since I had surgery on my foot and I was afraid the flood aters might carry bacteria that would do further harm...   Richard had been online looking at the weather forecasts... We thought every place in Baton Rouge area would be full...  so we looked further afield...  At first we were going to go to Natchez... but the storm bands looked like that wouldn't be far enough... so we booked a room and went to Vicksburg... 

It took a little while to throw things together... I have a pinched nerve in my back and the pain was paralyzing... but somehow we got ourselves and BG, one suitcase and the laptop to the car... we even loaded BG's kennel and bed if she needed it if we had to leave her at the room at any point... The water had come up several inches and the floors all had several inches...  We left between one wave and the next...  The water was up to the bottom of the car...  I slowly inched down the driveway hoping not to drown the engine with waves... at the end of the drive the car tilted and I was afraid the driveway had collapsed... but I think I probably was on the edge of the ditch on the side of the driveway...  I simply couldn't see where the driveway was... I gunned the gas a bit and backed on up to a level on the street and proceeded to get the car turned to go forward up the street that I couldn't see but could guess by the placement of mailboxes and trees where it was... when I got to the corner of Tallowwood and Partridgewood I was really nervous I'd turn too soon or too late but we made the corner and slowly crept up Partridgewood...  The water seemed a little less deep but I still couldn't see the street till I was almost to Gurney Rd...  Once on Gurney Rd we were pretty much okay all the way to Vicksburg although in St Francisville we were told HWY was closed up the road... we tried to call to get an update on road conditions but that was a mess... a long recorded trunk type message... the panic I was in I couldn't handle it and finally called 911 and found out that the HWY 61 wasn't closed...  many streets in towns along the route had roads closed but HWY 61 was ok thankfully.