When I was a kid, I kind of had it in my head that each region of the country was prone to its own form of natural disasters. The west had lightning-set wildfires, California had earthquakes, New England got Nor’easters, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts were vulnerable to hurricanes, and the plains states had tornados. I learned, over time, that those divisions weren’t set in stone, and that disasters could happen in places they did not usually; that southern Indiana could have a wildfire in a drought year, for example, or that tornadoes could and did happen in the mountain states.
The concept that northwest Indiana could be vulnerable to hurricane-flooding never crossed my mind, though. It’s just about 1200 miles from here to Galveston, where Ike first came ashore. And yet the reality is that the usually 3 minute, 1 mile drive from home to my son’s school takes about 10 minutes and nearly 5 miles, because while I can get to the intersection a quarter mile from home, there is about 700 feet of lake across what is usually the road between the stop sign and the house. It’s not deep, no more than a foot, but that’s quite enough to drown a car’s engine. School was closed the day after Ike came through, because half the district, including our house, wasn’t accessible to the buses.
I understand the mechanics of floods; it’s a part of the thunder-storm vulnerability of this region. But the concept of a storm so enormous that it could fling flooding rains like a child’s pin-wheel across a thousand miles is just beyond my ability to grasp other than theoretically, even as I look out the window at the expansion of our marsh that still blocks our way to the east.
I can just imagine your son’s glee. How many times has he explained the system to you?
I’ve lost count.