Why I Am Terrified by Violent Storms

A couple of people saw my FB status about not liking flash floods and asked me why I thought it was status-worthy to state that I do not like flash floods—because, really,  no one likes them. So here is the story of why I hate violent storms, especially ones with massive torrents of rain, thunder, and lightning.

On 20 March 2004, my children spent time with their father and I taught a Red Cross CPR class. It was a beautiful day until about 3:30, when thick, grey clouds began rolling in over the river. By the time class was over, at 5:30, torrential rain was falling. At one point we had a brief hailstorm. When I finished cleaning mannequins and putting away equipment, it was 6 p.m., and it was still pouring down rain.

I sprinted to the car, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. I was fortunate in where I had parked, as I realised when I switched on the headlamps. Literally six inches from my front tires was a deep puddle of roiling grey water. I backed up carefully and pulled a U-turn to get away from the deep water and head toward home.

When I got out on the main street, the rain was falling so hard it was difficult to see, even with the wipers on their highest setting. It’s ten miles from the Red Cross chapter building to my house, and it took me a full hour to drive it. All the way home, the traffic reporters on the local radio station were telling drivers to beware of reduced visibility and flash flooding. Due to extensive flooding, I had to hang U-ies at least six times, and I saw the tractor half of a semi-rig stuck in water that was up over its tires.

When I got home a half hour after I was supposed to, the ex and kids weren’t there. I ran inside, getting drenched yet again, and grabbed a towel to mop off. Then I noticed the blinking light on the answerphone. The message was from my ex: “My car sank. I have the kids and we’re all safe. Some people are bringing us home. We will be there soon.”

Of course, I freaked out—the kids were just 7 and 5. And then Daddy called. The kids were at his house. They were soaking wet and frightened. They needed dry clothes and their mom. I went back out, getting soaked yet again, and drove to Mom and Dad’s house. Daddy had taken my ex home.

The children were in a state only slightly short of hysteria, and talked about the water coming in the car and up over their legs, and their Daddy handing them out his window to a man who swam them to high ground, and their Daddy having to get on the roof of his car. And their armour and swords had washed away, and Ikey’s penny was missing! I reassured them that we could get new toys if we didn’t find the old ones and told them I was just glad they were okay.

Daddy came in, called my ex, and left again. The firemen needed the ex’s car keys so they could move his car out of the roadway now that the water had abated. Daddy went and got him, took him back to his car, and then took him home again.

As my parents and I pieced together later from the garbled accounts of the children, the few comments that my ex made, and what Daddy saw, this is what happened.

Just south of Poplar Avenue, White Station Road takes a steep drop and then climbs back up pretty quickly at Park Avenue. So the road is kind of like an enormous bowl at that spot. My ex happened to turn down into the bowl just as a flash flood hit … he saw the water, but, not knowing about the flood warnings, and not being used to the weather here (he’d only lived here 8 years), he drove on through.

The flood peaked just as he hit the bottom of the bowl, and the water killed his engine. Then it floated his car and began filling it up. The ex was unable to open his car door, but he was able to climb back and get the kids out of their five-point-harness car seats and onto the car roof. His plan was to swim one to safety, leaving the other on top of the car, and then return for the second one. But just as he was putting the boys on the roof of the car, a stranger who had swum out to the car tapped him on the shoulder and took one of the boys to safety while the ex swam with the other one. (God bless that stranger! We don’t know who he was, because when the ex turned around to thank him, he was gone.)

The water was more than six feet deep, because my ex is almost six feet tall, and he said it was well over his head. He  later told Daddy, “It just happened so fast! In less than a minute, the car was full of water up to the seats.”

The kids were really worried about their dad’s car, so I drove them by the flood site on the way home. There were mud and leaves and hunks of rocks all over the roadway, and their dad’s car had mud and leaves in a line all the way around the car about an inch below the roof. Looking at it, I couldn’t see how they got out in time. It was a pure miracle, as was the “convenient” stranger who swam out to the car and carried my babies to safety.

The boys took a long time to recover. Over the course of the first week after it happened, they had to tell each and every person that they met about their ordeal. It helped that their toys were recovered—Daddy brought them to me after I’d tucked the boys into their beds that night, and I washed the mud and garbage off of them and gave the boys a nice surprise the next morning. We had to replace the electronic “Frodo” swords, but that was a small price to pay when I think of the other possibilities.

But over the long term, recovery for the boys took time. There were about three years where they both had recurrent nightmares in which they were back in the car with the water coming up their legs, and would wake screaming in terror. It was two years before they stopped clinging to me whenever it rained. And it was only about a year ago that my youngest stopped having hysterics whenever a thunderstorm went through.

And while I am profoundly grateful to God for saving my sons that night, I have still not really recovered from the terror of that night myself. Especially on nights when my children are with my ex and not with me when the storms hit.

Tags: children, Family Life, fear, flash flood, miracles, nightmares, parenting, storms, thunderstorms, True Stories, weather