April 7, 2025
Day 1,284 of the Adventure
One week ago, I published a post related to the severe storms approaching the mid-west. I called it "
Timestamp for Disaster Prep". It was an attempt to illustrate a point and not to sensationalize the immanent storm threat and the aftermath of it. Prior to its arrival, a posting scrolled across my facebook page that included the warning; "PREPARE NOW - FLOODING WILL HAPPEN". Now, a week later, we know that flooding did happen (and is still happening for that matter) Tornados occurred in abundance and with all of that, lives were lost. To be absolutely clear, lives lost is ALWAYS the ultimate tragedy with any weather event. So, it is with some very careful language that I approach my intent of this posting. Our family has been the victims in a tornado event a number of years ago. Back on Memorial Day weekend of 2008, Shelley's hometown was stuck by an F5 Tornado, effectively removing roughly half the town from the face of the planet. This included destroying the house where she grew up and where her dad currently lived. He was spared because he took the only shelter available which was lying down in the bathtub while the storm passed. He came through untouched, but the bed he had been lying on mere moments earlier had a huge tree laying across it. Had he remained there for perhaps 30 seconds longer, he may have indeed been a part of the death toll statistics of the community. In saying this, I simply wish to underscore the fact that some things are beyond our control. Tornados are one of those things that even when we are prepared as best we can, it's entirely possible that our best efforts may not be enough. We also lived, at one point, in a flood zone that historically produced catastrophic flood events. It was impossible to avoid them. The best we could do is be prepared for them when they happened. In the six years we lived at, and ran a business on the property, we experienced six or seven minor flood events and two significant ones. Minor was up to six inches of water in the lower levels. Major was up to seven feet of water in multiple buildings. When it comes, it can't be stopped. We simply knew what to prepare for when it became immanent. For that reason, we got flooding but were never surprised by it, nor were we ever threatened by it beyond the cleanup we knew that would follow.
To my point. Everyone has those potential disaster related events that are common to us in our specific regions. After that, we also know there are threats that are not so common but can still potentially affect us. I've said repeatedly that ours are, in order, Winter ice storms, Spring tornado storms, flash flooding, general flooding, forest fires then perhaps lighting, possibly an earthquake (proximity to the New Madrid Faultline) Bigfoot encounters then maybe moonshine stills exploding. Perhaps Moonshine stills exploding would be higher up the list than the Bigfoot encounters. Humor aside, I'd say everyone can make a list of the top three or four most likely to occur events to be prepared for. This list makes up the baseline for preparedness. Perhaps it would not have been possible to reduce the toll of casualties in this past weekend's storms to zero. Still, I wonder if it could have been less by spending just a little time and effort to understand the threats better. Just some thoughts to consider as we decide how to become better prepared for all of the things that nature can throw at us.
Adventure Quote: “there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.” ― Stephen King
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