County Prepares For The Unknown

Driving around Pacific Junction Friday, watching the sandbaggers and railroad contractors preparing for the predicted flood waters, I was reminded of the eerie feeling I had back in the summer of 1979 while completing some National Guard training at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss.

   I didn’t have a television in my dorm room on the base, probably not even a radio, and certainly not a computer or cell phone. I was two weeks away from completing a hot summer of training and anxious to return home to Nebraska.
    I was totally oblivious to what was going on in the outside world, so it caught me off guard when I went out for a walk on the base one night and noticed the windows on all the buildings had a letter “X” taped across them.
    I had no idea what the “X” meant - I was an 18-year-old kid who had lived my entire life in the Midwest. It didn’t dawn on me that Biloxi was preparing for a disaster until I walked into the market and saw how depleted the shelves were. I picked up a newspaper and learned that a hurricane was making its way through the Gulf of Mexico and the states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were in its path.
   The next two days leading up to Hurricane Frederick’s arrival, people were moving around the base like a colony of ants, trying to get all of the necessary preparations done before the storm’s arrival. I remember some people covering the windows on their homes with large sheets of plywood and others carrying belongings out of their homes and loading up their vehicles for an exit to higher and safer ground.
   Nobody talked about it, but there was such a sense of fear and helplessness. We all knew the storm  and its imminent destruction were coming, but there was nothing we could do to stop it.
    Just try to prepare, get out of the way and hope for the best.
  I sensed some of those same feelings of fear and helplessness last week in Pacific Junction. Folks in Pacific Junction, Bartlett, Hamburg and rural areas of western Mills and Fremont counties aren’t certain how this flood thing is going to play out in the coming days and weeks, but they’re doing whatever they can to shore up their homes, salvage their property and protect their community.
    From a practical preparedness standpoint, there are certainly advantages to knowing that a natural disaster is looming, but for psychological purposes, I can’t help but wonder if it’s really better to have advance warning of a disaster. I saw an interview on TV last week with a gentleman who experienced the loss of his home from a tornado.
    “It (tornado) happens and it’s over. You’re in shock, but you move on with rebuilding your home and your life,” he said. “In many ways, a  flood can be worse because it’s an on-going process that takes a toll on you before, during and after it happens.”
    If the predictions and fears for this summer’s Missouri River flooding come to fruition, western Mills County residents could be in for a long, drawn-out event like our community has never experienced before. The western side of our county has flooded in the past, of course, but never over a two- or three-month period like some forecasters are predicting.
    The sandbags are  filled, the levees and railroad tracks are getting shored up, so now we’re left with a game of Wait and See.
    Mills County is preparing itself for the great unknown. It’s an eerie feeling. We’re expecting the worst,  hoping for the best.