Waiting and Waiting

We don't need AccuWeather to tell us the Flo-Flood will be upon us tonight and tomorrow.  Our Weather Frog was 10 feet up on the window this morning, begging to come in. 😱

We are fortunate as our house is at 12 feet above sea level and the Sampit River and Winyah Bay (where we are) are not expected to flood as much as the PeeDee, Black, and Waccamaw.

This weekend we watched people and vehicles pour into town and begin work on various projects.  Not only the big equipment and wonderful young people of the National Guard, but emergency personnel lent from all over the East, and private folks like those bringing in their own flat boats and air boats, pickup trucks loaded with bottled water, $4000 worth of food from the people of New Orleans, animal rescue groups, and on and on. They come at their own expense just because they know the misery of flooding.  

Like Mr. Rogers said, in an emergency, look for the helpers.  

Since Sunday the Guard has been working to construct a huge floating bridge to take supplies and emergency vehicles across the river when the three big bridges become impassable. Georgetown Hospital has been been evacuated and now the next closest hospital is across two bridges and up the main highway, which will flood.  

A fleet of these heavy trucks arrived, each with a huge metal box on the back, at the Sampit River marina.

The staging area is about a half mile from our house. The truck with its headlights on is backed down the boat ramp into the water. It released one of the big metal boxes into the river and slowly it opened up like an unfolding flower until it was flat on the water and afloat.  Several more boxes were dumped, unfolded, and attached together.  

Voila!  It's a floating road, one that can hold a fully loaded semi truck of sandbags, supplies, or whatever.  It was an amazing thing to see.

Another even bigger project is sandbagging for miles at both ends of the bridges.  These are some of the smaller plastic tubes; farther up the neck they are four or five feet tall with enormous girth. Unfortunately all this work is only a temporary fix to keep the bridges open as long as possible.  No matter what they do, Hwy 17 will eventually flood, cutting Georgetown off.  We went for a drive last night to see what we could see before the deluge begins and there was already water on the road here.  Enormous temporary lights were on and the Guard was working in the dark in the watery area to shore things up.

Unfortunately, a tropical storm will dump more water on the Carolinas at the height of the flood crest Thursday and Friday.  Eight thousand homes and businesses in the county are expected to flood. 

Thank God for the helpers!