!Flood --- agk's diary 6 April 2025 @ 01:39 UTC --- written on Evy's GPD MicroPC while it rains steadily --- A bluegrass concert in Beattyville this weekend would have raised money for victims of last month's catastrophic floods. Flood relief concert was canceled. Venue flooded. Yesterday on the radio I heard there's floodwater in downtown Clay City. It's expected to rise for five more days. Angie Gable put on a playlist, left the radio station an hour early to try to get home. Naphina's kids splashed happily in the lake their yard became. Then it merged with the creek, a muddy torrent full of debris, potentially deadly. It poured into the basement of their ninety-year-old house. Now it's raining again. June lives across town from me, one street over from Naphina. He couldn't get home. Meter-deep water blocked the only road to his neighborhood. He's in a play all weekend. He slept somewhere. Roommate bikes to work at Wal-mart in rain, bikes home in rain, puddles ever deeper. Thursday, we huddled in the downstairs bathroom. Tornadoes tore a path through our town. Klaxons sounded all over the ridge at 0300. It wasn't all clear for 45 minutes. Then sirens were five ambu- lances or firetrucks, going to rescue my neighbors. Evy fed daughter, put her back to bed. I drove to the hospital, where my teens had huddled 45 minutes in their tornado shelter, then returned to their rooms to sleep. Hospital phones couldn't call out all shift. Hard to plan discharges like that. Storm water killed a teen's memaw. Rain falls, trees fall, power's out, it's back on, more rain falls, water rises, debris blocks culverts and storm drains, water rises more, falls a little, power's out again. Rain falls in Gaza too. At least we have dry blankets and food. Cinnamon roll and milk, toast and peanut butter, soup, beans and rice, oranges. No one's hunting us. Thursday night Noah and I walked and talked. Water stood everywhere, fifteen centimeters and deeper. The creek was a brown torrent. We noted the debris we passed. Five bridges were fine. Thousands of earthworms labored across the pavement. In places the creek bank was collapsed or under- mined. Storm water glugged steadily through a damaged sewer manhole. Noah showed me a picture on his smartphone, the bridge to his house, one state east, submerged. He headed home with plans to drive across a field. Today Evy, first daughter, and I walked the same path. The first bridge's now off-kilter, a footing eroded away. Large debris covers its deck. Asphalt road to the next bridge undermined. A chunk of road washed away. A sanitary sewer cracked open. A tree on a house. A muddy torrent. First daughter's daycare sent out a text alert. Their phones and internet are out indefinitely. The concrete floor of our garage, entirely covered with drops of water. Humidity condensed on it. I mopped up as much as I could, placed fans. Musty mildew and mold want to grow. I beat them back. The battle will continue day after day. Noah tells me about the time he found a human eye- ball in the gutter outside the clinic we started years ago in New Orleans. He didn't know what to do about it. He kicked it down the storm drain. That was the day he decided to move away, never return. Rain falls, creek rises, humidity condenses, tor- nadoes blow, infrastructure degrades and breaks. We watch dumbly, wait for horsemen to hang hats, take off their boots a spell.