Floods

Please excuse me for a moment while I discuss a topic that is not typical to the horror genre.  But sometimes the everyday stuff is scary on it's own. 

My five year old son is a bit of a science geek.  Natural disasters are his biggest area of interest.  It is very common in our house for National Geographic and Nova documentaries to be on the TV.  Each member of our family knows facts about natural disasters that the average person  may not.  For instance, did you know that floods kill more people than any other natural disaster?  That's some kind of scary!

Being a military family, we've moved around quite a bit.  Right now we call the great state of Colorado home.  Colorado has been in the news an awful lot lately.  The wildfires that spread through the state earlier this summer were devastating in their own right.  As soon as things started to turn back to normal, Colorado was bombarded with flash flooding.  Lives have been lost, homes have been taken and roads were washed away.  Fortunately for my family, we have not been directly affected by the floods that have occurred in the state.  But I, personally, have been a victim of a flood before.

Nearly ten years ago, I was living in Pittsburgh.  Torrential downpours were a daily occurrence.  One evening, flash floods began to wash through some areas.  I worked the night shift at a psychiatric hospital and as I drove down the road that would take me into work, I ended up driving right into a lake that was never there before.  Luckily my supervisor was outside with a police officer at the time.  He watched my car become surrounded by water.  It wasn't long after that when water came rushing into the car from underneath the floorboards.  I knew I didn't have a lot of time, so when my supervisor instructed me to jump out the window - I wasn't able to get the door open as there was too much water pushing against it - I grabbed my bag and jumped.  Needless to say, that car never ran again.  And long story short, things worked out okay.  The next day I had a party to attend.  Nearly everyone there had a story to tell about the flood - this room flooded, that yard took on water - but I was the only one who had a truly frightening experience.

So the next time you watch or read the news and see that someone somewhere was affected by a natural disaster, take a moment to realize that someone's personal horror story happened that day.