We Are Not Prepared for All the Floods

It took my husband 45 minutes to drive the last two miles to his university today because of the flash floods.

It took one of his colleagues 90 minutes to drive his daughter to school, a trip that usually takes 10 minutes.

I am not even speaking about Hurricane Irene and what it did to our area of western Massachusetts; for an update on its ramifications you can read my post where photos are also included.

After being pummeled by Hurricane Irene 11 days ago, we are now experiencing the aftereffects of Tropical Storm Lee.

Just have a look at the flash flood in one of the parking lots at the university where my husband teaches. He called to tell me that one of his students was surprised by her parents with a brand new car this past weekend with only 100 miles on it and, yes, it got washed away. Needless to say, she is distraught.

Areas of the northeast have barely had a chance to recover and to rebuild and now we are faced with more rain and flooding and folks even had to be rescued today in a neighboring area.

Emergency notification systems must be in place as we deal with more extreme events at greater frequencies.

One of my students in my Transportation & Logistics class this morning who lives close to the Connecticut River told me that she could see from her house refrigerators, cars, and detritus floating by -- not a natural set of events.

The flooding in Pennsylvania and middle New York state is now resulting of the evacuation of 100,000!

A very sad and scary state of affairs and so few in the northeast hold flood insurance, as the head of The Bement School, where my daughter went to elementary school, recently noted in a letter to the community of the hardships suffered because of Hurricane Irene and the flooding in Deerfield.

Now if only we could somehow transport all the excess water in the Northeast to the dried out and burning parts of Texas.