My View: Floodwater Changes Lives

By News Director Bob Longo

POSTED: 7:16 am EDT September 22, 2004
UPDATED: 1:35 pm EDT September 22, 2004

The skies opened up that day.
We were warned they might,
but not like this. Not like this.

The skies opened up and up and up
and didn't stop. Refused to stop.
Unrelenting, the rain pounding, pounding, pounding.
The water rushing, swelling, overtaking all in its way.

The swift torrent of liquid evil harmed everything in its path.
Churning, marooning, destroying.

You can't take anything with you.
And here is proof. The water destroying everything.
Unrelenting, everything before it is swept away. Ruined.
Brown, oozing mud water thick and sickening. Unrelenting.

Records of peoples lives, pictures and papers washed away.
Destroyed in a murky mad rush that wouldn't slow or stop.
Men and machines plunged in where they could.
Plucking people from harm's way.

But the water surrounded them too.
The rescuers need rescued.

And then the rain stopped. And it was calm.
Surreal sunshine bathed us in its glory.
We gazed in wonder, the view, unimaginable the day before.

Sapphire blue sky. Willowy, wispy clouds. Bright yellow sunshine
all looking down on the remnants of the mad rush.

Now, hearts pour open where the skies had a week before.
Hearts and wallets and backs and hands and will all helping.
Helping where they can.

Lifting, pulling, moving, washing, making new again, replacing,
donating, giving. From the mud springs a new life. And so the despair is
a little easier to deal with knowing that goodness can help, can change
the bad; can replace the broken and missing with something new.

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