He called me yesterday, before the devastation had hit the news. He’s OK, but had spent the night at his workplace, the post office, and was hoping to get home by tonight. He could not contact his wife, but spoke to her just before the river crested and knocked out their phone service. She should be fine; they live on high ground that doesn’t flood.
I suggested he shoot some cell phone video, but I am just shaken up by the whole thing (more than he is!) Their town of 1,500 was singled out on the news as having borne the brunt of the damage. Crazy.
I have a coworker who is from that area, and this coming week she’s supposed to be on vacation going there. She’s been telling us about scenes of places she recognized in news videos.
But I hope he doesn’t live in that one single house w/garage that CNN shows over and over and over. Or the house that’s on fire while afloat. Are there only two video cameras in the entire state?
No word yet, but that’s not surprising since their home phone is out and cell service is practically nonexistent at their house.
Besides, I imagine he went straight to the cupboard for food (his Thursday “dinner” was popcorn) and sleep (I don’t know where he slept, but it couldn’t have been comfortable).
He called me tonight - from home. They have phone service and power back.
He says the downtown area is screwed; the businesses lost everything and he figures many, if not most, of the non-chain businesses won’t be able to come back.
Any explanation of why so many people died? There should be adequate weather forecasting and communication facilities to inform people about the danger.
A lot of elderly people who live near the river, plus flash flooding = deaths. This was supposed to be a normal thunderstorm, except the line of storms suddenly shifted north so that instead of being like a normal thunderstorm that dumped an inch or so of water and left, this area stayed under the line of storms for hours, long enough to get 10" of rain in half a day. That’s unusual, and hard to predict.