After Hurricane Floyd hit and flooded out a good deal of eastern NC I went down twice to help with security and cleanup. HOW more people did not drown is beyond me. In on area the water level was 10-20 UP in the trees. Caskets were popping up out of the grave yards. Houses floating off their foundations. Cars in stacks. One dairy lost 100 cows in that area.
A couple of the cows managed to get INSIDE a mobile home to try to escape the flood. They drowned in that trailer. The only thing that could be done was to burn the trailer. I have a photo of cow ribs near bed springs. Freaky BBQ.
I saw entire huge areas destroyed. Thousands of homes.
One little town had one low lying area taken out. Those people had NOTHING. They barely got out with the lives with very little warning. What was worse is that three generations of families had homes flooded out. They had never seen this level of flooding. And no place to go.
The Red Cross, National Guard, the Mennonites, Baptists, plus us is all they had to help them.
One of the houses we helped clean out was owned by an elderly couple. They had already gotten everything out of the house but the heavy appliances.
Not sure how they did it but they did. They had a beautiful house with three freezers full of food they grew in their garden. The smell of the rotten food was unreal. One freezer had 50 pounds of rotten butter.
The lady hit a store with butter on sale.
I really cannot describe how bad all of this was to see. And to smell. It took eight of us plus the home owners a couple hours to get the appliances out of the house but we got it done for them.
The daughter of the couple asked for an address and name which I supplied a week or so later we got a very nice thank you note.
It was much appreciated. I think of that family and they others often. I wonder if they have recovered and if they are growing their garden again....
Later,
Dan
