It’s a bit of a surreal start to the day when you are greeted by Al Roker standing on a bridge in your home town telling you about how high the water is getting.
My family is fine. Most of Quincy is up on a bluff, so it’s really only the bottomlands that flood out. But that makes it an ideal place for reporters to roost. They can have their comfy stay at a local hotel, swing by the mall, grab some lunch at one of the many chain places that has opened up and then head down to the water’s edge for some excellent photo ops. So it sounds as though the whole of the town is about to go under, when really the water supply is the biggest concern. I know other towns aren’t so fortunate, but it amuses me how they use the media funhouse mirror to make it look as though they are putting themselves in mortal peril, when really they are snug as bugs.
In the summer of 93, I was there, sandbagging. We were nowhere near the water; we were at the college filling the bags, but I remember the experience pretty clearly. Water was brought in to us from a brewery in St. Louis–they had taken beer production offline and just canned water for the volunteers. It was hot. I got blisters. But I worked for several hours along side of hundreds of other people, all working toward the same goal.
So this 100 year flood in 93 comes close to this flood in 2008. I expect we’ll start hearing about St. Louis and Anna once the water crests in Q-Town. And then in another 10-20 years we’ll have another 100 year flood. Hyperbole is the stuff of reporters dreams.
