Opening day of a life of sadness

The other day – the “Day Off” – the traffic jam on the interstate was mentioned with the dozens of emergency vehicles with so many trailers of search and rescue rafts going by. The above picture I took shows just one of those trailers racing by in the breakdown lane with three of those rafts. There were at least 15 rafts coming from – I thought – as far away as the other part of the State, Winston-Salem, but I was told yesterday that they came from as far away as the Atlantic coast. You can read the road sign. I think it said that it was still 15 miles to Canton. I never did see any accident, and only found out the next day that this was no traffic accident, say, over a bridge, but rather a flooding catastrophe of the town of Canton. The town was flooded. The residences were flooded.

One story I heard was of a woman floating through town in her trailer-home, going about four streets downstream until she hit a tree, hard. Another story, so sad… so very sad… recounted by the wife… said that her husband, a special ops military guy in superb physical shape, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, got smacked hard in the head in the chaos and wound up outside the vehicle, still not found in the ravaging waters. Hail Mary…

The angels were at work with impossible coincidences, and I was able to deliver a load of food from the Joe El-Khouri Mercy Outreach of our little parish here in Andrews to Grace Community Church on scene. I had an EMT as navigator. Without him, I never would have found the tucked away little church which was super busy with relief efforts. God bless them.

There were, as of yesterday afternoon, two dead and twenty-six missing, two days later… That’s a huge blow to this village. They have no gymnasium or makeshift shelters to go to. FEMA can’t come in until the rescue effort is finished. That will be quite a while yet. With waters receding and people wanting to get what they can from any upper level of their homes, another priority is to educate about the deadly black mold which starts to grow almost immediately.

Hail Mary…