To Those Hit Harder

To all of us who are safe and well, I dedicate this post.  I offer up my totally manageable, totally bearable, totally slight brush with the recent terrible weather disasters.  I hope we all appreciate our well-being – and that we may connect, with empathy, with others who have been utterly devastated.

I stow things I want to keep, and don’t have the space for at home, in small storage unit.  Yesterday I took a look at the damage done by the floods.

Keep in mind the manager of the facility.  He and his wife live on the site.  They’re sure they saved their wedding dress of forty years ago, because it was sealed in a plastic tub.  They are pretty sure they lost everything else.  They’re so busy helping the rest of us, though, they don’t know for sure yet.

They moved here from Biloxi, after being wiped out by Katrina.  They had flood coverage there. Which the insurance company denied them.  Because the damage wasn’t caused by a flood.  It was caused by a tidal wave.

Keep in mind that in this storm here, the manager and his wife were barely evacuated in time.  They had to wade through waist-deep water to safety.

Keep in mind that the small bridge over the small creek, on the approach-road to the facility, was knocked eight inches off its moorings.  City crews worked 24 hours to repair it.

It rained yesterday.  It’s raining again today.  Harder.

I had the brilliant idea – if I say so myself – to use every available car as a drying unit.

It worked great.

Except I could not save these.  Wartime letters from my father to his family.

Here is Bugs, very wary of my grandmother’s shawl.  It weighed one ton soaking wet.  To be frank, it stank.

I don’t know how Bugs’s sensitive sniffer could stand it – But here he is, up close and personal.

Right after I took that snap, I banished the mess to the Hell Room.

Like I said.  Raining again.  Please refer to earlier pics.  Same old.