Yesterday in My Town: massive FLOODING.

Above: This is the parking lot of my favorite grocery store, about two blocks away.

Above: A drainage ditch gets more than a hard workout.

Photos above and below are only a mile from our house.

Above and below: someone's backyard.

Above: someone's basement, following a gushing of rapids which came rushing through.

Above: A nearby canal collapses and crumbles from flood waters

We are safe and were thankfully unaffected by the tornado warning, torrential rain and HAIL which began late afternoon yesterday, while I was posting my earlier entry. The mere 4-5 inches of rain arrived so fast and furiously that cars literally became boats, floating downstream. Had our house not been at the top of the hill, I'm certain we'd have had some water. Our backyard is a bit boggy but everything else is fine on all other accounts. I was called into work late last night about 8 p.m. to assist with displaced families who temporarily relocated to an emergency shelter. By the time I and two other colleagues from our department arrived, Red Cross pretty much had everything under control, but we did a little coordinating and made a late-night run to a closed grocery store (whose last cashier graciously stayed there by the door and waited for us to arrive) so we could pick up some baby formula and diapers for several stranded new moms. Finally at about 11 p.m., we called it a night. All day today, however, we were back on scene at the emergency shelter working with families, making sure residents could get back to their homes, picking up supplies, making phone calls, attending a press conference, and attempting to calm some rightfully hysterical folks who lost a whole of their home's contents. At last count, 14 homes have been condemned to major safety and structural risks, largely due to cracked and collapsing foundations annihilated by the flood. We're preparing to relocate folks as needed starting tomorrow. It was quite a long day, but there's a lot more work to do to help folks get everything back to the way it was... just two days ago.