Flood Watch

Trying to conceive of the concern and misery of people desperately attempting to fend off the ravages of floodwaters ruining their fields, their homes, vast acreages of farmland, threatening the safe security of farm animals, is not quite possible. We tend to divorce ourselves from the reality of the details, the anguish being suffered by people who see their homes and their dreams being destroyed by a force of nature that human ingenuity cannot possibly control.

Of course it is well known that it is a risky concern, building on a flood plain. Municipalities are logically supposed to deny permits to those seeking to build on flood plains for the very good reason that there is always a danger of flooding; this is why those low-lying areas in river basins are called flood plains. But there is something inordinately attractive to people about living in close proximity to running water; to lakes and rivers.

The view is irresistible, the recreational opportunities magnificently compelling. And people habitually think of the positive, the pleasures involved in building where it seems attractive to do so, rather than lingering on thoughts of the negative and potentials for dismal disaster. Nature may never, we reason, threaten the land we will build upon, and if it does, it will be manageable. Human ingenuity will provide.

But then the catastrophic occurs, and no amount of human ingenuity quite manages to challenge nature's indomitable will to do as she will with the climate, with the environment, with the puny lives and plans of mere humankind. Having said which, the richest soil is often alluvial, and planting agricultural crops on that rich soil, and having a close source of water for irrigation makes good, practical sense.

With farmland comes farmhouses, and if the farms are established there, then why not small towns as well, where the watershed can also provide potable water for the use of the nearby residents? Let's face it; human beings have always chosen to build their settlements along the banks of lakes and rivers; it made for easy availability of a water source, and for transportation.

It is a tragedy that once in a while, flooding occurs that transcends what people normally anticipate year-over-year in a tradition of manageable, nuisance flooding. When minimal risk becomes maximum liability and everyone rushes to try to manage as best they can, hoping that somehow, a miracle will occur, and the worst possible scenario will not, after all, result.

The agonizing suspense of watching and waiting and hoping and praying is a dreadful way for people to have to live.

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  Members of 2nd battalion Princess Patricia's Light Infantry help load sandbags onto helicopter slings to be transported to weak sections of the dike running along the Assiniboine River some 25km from Portage La Prairie, Man. Thursday, May 12, 2011.(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

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  Brandon Sun Civic employees wait to deliver sandbags on a dike set up on John Avenue, Thursday afternoon. May 12, 2011(Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun)