TERRE HAUTE, Indiana - Terre Haute, a French expression for “high land,” looked like anything but high as we, in a tiny red mosquito of a plane, flew above flooded fields, farms and ruined homes that would never dry out to be what they once were.

Seven days ago, after weeks of almost daily rain, came a gusher that lasted all night. When it stopped, there was nearly a foot of rain covering millions of acres up and down the Wabash Valley. All that water had to go someplace, so it poured into creeks with names such as Otter, Honey and Lost Creek.

They swirled their way to the Wabash and White Rivers, only to find higher and angrier water pushing back. As the creeks lost their pushing match with the rivers, they filled up and burst their banks, spilling into homes and trailer parks and farms situated so far from the flood plains that hardly any of the owners carried flood insurance.

The big rivers raged their way south, pushing at the levees at every turn like race cars going too fast into corners until… the levees broke and jack-o-lantern gaps as wide as barn doors opened to torrential canyons of water the color of chocolate milk that rushed into freshly planted fields with neat rows of corn, beans and this season’s dreams.

As we droned along, I got lost in thoughts of what I might do and how we might help…

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Bill Horan, Disaster, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.