Watching flood videos on Disaster News on X, I am always shocked at how many drivers, even those with children, now drive through flood waters on the road. If you value your life and the lives of your family, don’t do that.
Here is a road near Dam 4 close to Sharpsburg, (Antietam) MD and just above Williamsport, MD. I recorded this video on 05/15/2025. It provides an excellent example of a road you should never drive on. Yet, increasingly, drivers do so everyday and endanger their lives, the lives of their family members, and the lives of first responders.
Part of the reason is that the electronics in cars are now so well protected and sealed that drivers can continue driving in flood waters whereas in the past they would stall out immediately. And, unfortunately, many drivers do not fear flood waters and think, mistakenly, they can just drive through them.
American Tactical Civil Defense Tip: Be aware that only a few inches of tires on your truck or car connect to the asphalt as you drive through flood waters. As the same time, tons of flood water are striking your vehicle. The laws of physics determine that your vehicle will start to float off and you and your passengers could drown. Don’t drown. Turn around.
Bonus: Here are some photos of a great blue heron that was clinging to the remaining shore line beside the aqueduct at the C & O Canal bridge at Williamsport, MD. My guess is that he lost his nest. Otherwise, he would have flown away and never would have let me this close to him to take these photos. As in all natural disasters, there is God’s beauty if we keep our eyes and Spirit open to it.
The Return
The land beacons
with fruit and wheat
and wildlife abundant,
so I crawl from the sea,
seaweed draped and brine
permeated to the shoreline.
And I am one now,
my mother and family
are close by laughing
and the sea waves beat
their eternal rhythm softly,
faintly familiar but forgotten
because there is so much
between now and the return.
The football flies high above
the waves, drops back,
drops to a friend now laughing
by the sea waves until it lands
by a girl I’ve been watching
for hours who reciprocates
with a hair toss and shy smile,
and the din of the ocean
is silent for some years.
For a time, there is so much
to be done on dry land.
One day my own baby
is on my shoulders
frightened by the sea waves
and their ultimate calling.
I laugh at him, of course,
confident after so many years
with the sea and its waves
that I’ve mastered them,
felt their power and captured it,
taken it on and rechanneled it
to a life beyond these shores.
The land that beaconed
so many years ago
kept its promise.
It gave me the means
to support a growing family.
Good and sweet
foodstuffs abundant.
Clean, clear water,
even in cities, and shelter
from all but the fiercest storms
that claimed many far away
but left us safe and dry
at higher land elevations.
Now...this wheel chair
and these grandchildren
and great grandchildren.
If I could only tell them
of that journey from the sea
and all the lands between,
the seascape and landscape
and each is so dependent
on the other for life.
Of how the shoreline
is the altar upon which
the inner life should know
how tenacious and beautiful
and brief this life on dry land
looks when the sea beacons
like the oceans waves, at this end.
They show me the baby
and I hope I can recognize him.
I wish my body still answered
my thoughts, but we both know
it can never be so again.
I hear the waves clearly, though.
Through it all, the years and cities,
wars I have fought and been wounded in
and the news media’s drumbeat
psyoped into my head, all spread before me
as on a screen, I still hear the waves.
My family looks at me with such
concern and pity, but it is not the time
or place for pity. I hear the waves
on the shore...WWOOOOOSHSHSH...
WWOOOOOOSHSH...WOOSHSH...
I hear their tender and light-filled call,
and I surrender...I surrender.
From the time I crawled from the sea
they’ve been calling me to them again.
No more crawling inland...
...it is time to answer the sea’s call,
it is time to return.
Fenwick Island, DE
June 19, 1997
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