A Storm With No End

 

By Tom Poland

 

For me, the Columbia Deluge resurrected forty-two years of “day-after” memories of Earth’s penchant for fury. May 31, 1973. I awoke to a blue sky and the scent of fresh pines. The afternoon before a tornado cut a trail of death and destruction through Athens, Georgia.

September 4, 1979. A photographer and I drove to Edisto Island to document Hurricane David’s arrival, knowing it had already killed more than 2,000 people. Close to Edisto, horizontal rain pelted the windshield like gravel. On we went. Live oaks and palmettos shook their crowns saying, “You don’t want to do this.” We soldiered onward and stood on the beach watching the advance edge of a hurricane. Wet sand stung my face as a 55-gallon drum skipped toward us, hop scotching along its rim. When a nearby power line snapped spewing fire and hissing like a snake, we left.

September 22, 1989. I got up to a land covered in pine boughs … they covered the ground like green shag carpet. The air smelled of Pinesol. Hurricane Hugo had passed through around midnight, filling the night sky with giant swirls of city-lit, orange bands.

October 6, 2015. For the first time in days the sun breaks through. A strange convergence of weather systems had dropped a Biblical deluge on the Midlands of South Carolina. A non-tropical low-pressure system drew in a deep, tropical plume of water vapor off the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, this upper-level low-pressure system tapped into water-rich Hurricane Joaquin. Jargon aside, thunderstorms ”trained,” passing repeatedly over the same location creating a narrow corridor of torrential rain from Charleston to the southern Appalachians. For three days radar revealed a band of ever-changing green, yellow, and orange blobs moving through the center of the state. Some experts described the rain as a once-in-a-thousand-year event. Soon, water and sewer systems were compromised. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Thus does my experience with Mother Nature’s fury continue to accumulate. I’ve been through two tornadoes, two hurricanes, an earthquake, a forest fire, and now I’ve seen what a flood can do. As the Elton John song goes, I’m still standing but only because of geographical providence. I live upstream of Columbia on a ridge. I got about 14 inches of rain and some places got more than two feet. As all that water rolled toward the Atlantic, I found it hard to believe what it was doing to the city. Not in my wildest dreams did I think a flood would destroy the Midlands the way it has, but that’s what happened October 3 through 5, and it isn’t over. As I write, dams continue to break. Bridges and roads give way. Homes fill with water. Trestles are compromised. Streets wash out.

 

Dirty Laundry

Floodwaters swept a friend’s backyard away. Now her place looks like a mining operation and her washed-out driveway is a slab of concrete suspended five feet midair. All over the Midlands these scenes repeat themselves. One friend woke up around 2:30 early Sunday morning … a rumbling noise began to grow. Upstream a dam had given way and a wall of water surged into her back yard, ripping the downstairs door off its hinges and filling the lower floor with five feet of water in mere seconds. She and her husband sought shelter upstairs. Their belongings headed toward the Atlantic courtesy of Lexington County’s 12-Mile Creek.

At this writing, the death toll statewide has risen to seventeen and I expect it to keep climbing. No telling what the murky waters conceal. Some roads and bridges have reopened but at this writing 268 roads and 136 bridges are closed. Some 40,000 homes have no water and those that do, including yours truly, must boil it before use. About 26,000 people have no power. Even the dead are affected. Coffins float to the surface. Rooftops protrude over muddy water, as do the roofs of cars and trucks. Collapsing roads have tossed cars askew bringing to mind news footage of earthquakes out West. In places, asphalt is broken into large fragments—like black glass struck by a hammer—again bringing to mind an earthquake.

Widespread devastation makes for big time news, so here come the media. Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” acknowledged that. “I make my living off the evening news. Just give me something I can use.” Said one woman, “You know it’s a bad day when a Today Show anchor shows up.” All in all, I suppose that’s understandable. We have a FEMA Type 1 disaster on our hands, the most complex of disasters, a disaster that demands help from national resources. Still someone should have taken Al Roker aside and pronounced “Congaree” for him. What he said was something like “Conagaree.” Al’s gone but help is pouring in. Wherever I drive I see flatbeds laden with earthmoving equipment. Drove past an emergency center where pallets of bottled water were stacked high. Boxes and boxes of food too. Law enforcement officers and emergency responders were everywhere. The people are mobilized.

 

An Hour’s Worth of Doomsday

Saturated neighborhoods resemble a scene from Mad Max shot in an apocalyptic Venice. The best way to get to stranded people is via motorboat. You could say an hour’s worth of Doomsday has arrived. One distraught man caught on camera summed up his family’s plight in four words. “We have lost everything.”

He’s not alone and over here the tempo of life itself has been shredded. As I write, it’s Tuesday. Schools and businesses are closed, as are government offices. I just got notice that the University of South Carolina is canceling all classes through Friday. AccuWeather Flood Alerts continue to flood my email. The disaster continues despite blue skies and what for all purposes is a magnificent fall day. Very hard to comprehend that about ten miles south the world is coming unglued. Helicopters chop the air hour by hour.

From every tragedy come moments of glory. Down South being neighborly is in our DNA. What impresses me is how the masses—ordinary people—are responding. People are doing whatever they can to help others. I’ve not seen one incident of rioting or looting. No criminal behavior. I see people helping people. Disasters, however, make people do odd things. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that fools are about. Saw news video of a roadbed collapsing even as a carload of young guys (jackasses) drove over it poking their heads out windows to yell at people. A man disregarded a barricade and drove around it. Soon he and his white pickup were floating away and had to be rescued. In Florence County, another disregarded barricade resulted in a car burning.

 

An Uncertain Future

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that some politicians postured to make political hay from tragedy. One used the occasion to post some content in poor taste on Facebook. People lost their lives to this flood. When it comes to politicians, I like and respect very few and I mean few. Rock star, Sting, pretty much sums them up. “They all seem like game show hosts to me.” As politicians seek headlines, ordinary heroes go unnoticed. I hope their stories of heroism are told. I know, firsthand, that a first responder braved rushing water to save a cat. More weighty acts of bravery, I’m sure, will surface through the floodwaters.

All of us in the Midlands face uncertainty. Old familiar routes no longer take us where we want to go. The path to old haunts is a zigzagged line and will be for a long time. For now something as simple but essential as a drink of fresh water presents a challenge. Boil your water you’re advised. Not an easy thing to do when the power’s out is it?

People who live on a hill or a ridge as I do are in good shape but after the waters dry out and people begin to repair their homes I expect a miasma will rise over the land. Imagine all the mold and mildew to come and not to be forgotten is all the sewage that’s been flushed to the surface. The fresh-pine scent of this sunny day will give way to a stench like no other.

Hell hath no fury like a storm with no end. Who knows what rampaging water has done? Who can detect its erosive ways? None of us are out of the woods. In the days and months to come I expect more roads to collapse. More sinkholes will swallow vehicles. An ordinary trip to the grocery store could turn deadly, moving that death toll up as the storm continues to claim victims. Meanwhile, just getting around will be tough. And then there’s that drinking water thing and funerals … more than a few tears will join those damn floodwaters as they make their way to the Atlantic from whence they came.

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of eleven books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

 

Sign up here to start your free subscription to MidlandsLife!