Saturday, July 16, 2011 :: Assessment

I thought it would be a good time for an assessment of our situation, because the question I hear most is, "What's the situation where you're at?"

#1 We are still dry here at our house and shop. The ground water is pretty close to the surface--our crawl space is full of water and the ditches in our yard have water, but dry otherwise. So thankful for this!
#2 To the west (towards Big Lake), water is in the fields in the lower areas for about a mile, then you come up and over the Little Tarkio Creek Levee and it is solid water beyond that.
#3 To the south (towards Fortescue), there's water over "Tater Ridge Road"-that's about 1/4 mile south of us. Water is in the lower areas, including in the ditches and lower parts of the field right across the highway from us.
#4 To the east (towards Mound City), about a mile down the highway there's quite a bit of water in some of the lower fields--like 2-3 feet I'd say. But between us and that, the ditches are full and lower areas in some fields.
#5 To the north of us, dry other than ditches and lower areas.
#6 Immediate threats--the only threat we have right now is the Little Tarkio Creek levee. We believe this would have to break for us to see water in our house. And although this is a possibility, we don't see it as a critical threat right now.
#7 When will the water start to leave? Well, at the earliest, September. The dam that is releasing water that is effecting us will be releasing this much water until late August. So the water has no place to go until the river starts to go down and only then can it carry some of our water away.

All this to say, things are kinda at a stand-still. We have water, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, better or worse. And this will continue for a while.

So with that assessment, we decided to return the semi trailer that has been parked in our yard for our "emergency evacuation." We're so thankful for friends willing to leave their truck and trailer parked in our yard for half of the summer! But it doesn't seem to look like we will be needing it.

And now, for the fun part of unpacking all of the boxes and putting everything back together and in place. And then we HOPE AND PRAY that the levee holds because next time we think we're going to get flooded, I'm inclined to let the flood have it all.

And THAT is the current situation of where we're at.  Water is stable, so we're trying to get our lives back to normal. I just hope I remember what normal is for us...it's been so long....