We apparently slept through the "Big Flood" today here in Keene, NH.
I woke up around 6:30 a.m. to the sound of sirens. There seemed to be a lot of them, but I didn't smell smoke, so I went back to sleep.
At 7:30 a.m., I got up to make sure my son had gotten up in time to deliver his newspapers. He's a paper boy for the Keene Sentinel, and an extremely conscientious one. I made a cup of coffee and anticipated reading our Sunday paper. (We get ours last. Doug is VERY conscientious. If for some reason he should be short a paper, we have to give up ours...)
Doug came back inside and he was upset. His papers had not been delivered. We called the Sentinel but no one was there to take our call.
"Something must have happened," I said.
I went to my studio to work on some orders for a few hours.
Soon, the phone was ringing off the hook.
"Are you okay??"
Apparently Keene has been declared a disaster area, one of the worst areas in a state-wide flooding emergency.
We turned on the TV to see the news, but our cable was out. (Keene is in a valley, and there is no reception without cable.) We checked the internet, but couldn't find anything. The Keene Sentinel's website showed a photo of a local golfer, but no news on the flooding.
We ventured outside. We're halfway up a hill and our street was dry. We found a few neighbors huddled together and joined them for the news.
Apparently, we had slept through the emergency sirens, a bullhorn warning, and a door-to-door solicitation by emergency workers for a "volunteer evacuation."
We walked around town as best we could, gathering what news we could. It appears the main flooding in our town is from a small river that runs through the middle of town called Beaver Brook. You can see some of the flooded areas in this movie my husband Jon made this morning:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/KeeneFlood.html
By this afternoon, much of the water had receded, though many streets are still underwater.
One block over from us flooded, and a few blocks down the hill flooded. We are high and dry. We had a little basement flooding, mostly from rain seeping in. But our sump pump bravely kept up with the worst of it. If we'd lost power, well, it would have been worse. But we are fine. While Jon went out on his bicycle to take photos, the kids and I raised Doug's brand new kiln up on bricks, to give it a few extra inches of draft above the water.
We'll know better tomorrow how bad the damage is. Right now, people are canoing down streets, and kids are riding their bikes through the shallower puddles.
Here's what's scary.
We had absolutely no way of finding out what was going on.
Some local radio stations continued with their regular programing. A few set that aside and took in phone reports from residents around the area. Most of their reports were from ham radio operators, as many areas lost power and people were unable to call out. The police lines were jammed (of course.) A NH state emergency website had some information, but all of it sketchy. Much of it contradicted what other people in the street had been told by emergency workers.
We are in a low-lying valley protected by a network of dams. Rumors flew that this dam and that dam had broken, and flood waters were on their way. We still don't know what dams actually broke, if any. There were conflicting reports on whether the worst of the surge would be OVER by 2:00 p.m. or whether they would hit Keene by 2:00 p.m.
We didn't know if a "voluntary evacuation" meant we COULD leave or we SHOULD leave. Later, we heard rumors we were to stay put. So many roads into Keene and outside Keene were washed out, it was safer to stay off the roads until further notice. But we never found out for sure.
A friend of my daughter's came by. On her way to our house, she encountered a child trying to cross a badly flooded street filled with rushing water. The water came up almost to his chest, she said. She helped him out. He told her his mother had sent him to the store to get bread and he was doing his best. She obviously had no idea what was going on. Katie convinced him to go home and explain to his mother why he didn't get the bread, and she would understand.
This could be a teen's exaggeration, or it could be a near tragedy.
Maybe if the situation were worse, we'd have heard more. But right now, it's a little scary how easy it is to find out what movies are playing at the Keene Cinemas tonight, and how hard it is to find out whether you should evacuate your home or not.
