Monday Morning Grievance: Safety First

Some people think signs only apply to other people.

It’s Monday morning and I haven’t had my coffee.

So, as most of you know, Hurricane Matthew visited us last week, bringing record floods to our area of Eastern North Carolina. Our particular town is fine, but not fifteen minutes away are towns under water, homes and businesses destroyed, and roads washed away. I have this scheduled to post at 5:30, and we’re still under a flash flood warning until 10:30 this morning. Remember: this is from a storm that came and went over a week ago.

I’ve told you before, but I live in a neighborhood with low-lying roads. As such, we flood easily (our roads, not our homes). There’s one notorious curve that routinely ends up under water even in a light rainstorm.

Well, last Thursday the barriers went up blocking off that road – three barriers on each side of the washout. Guess what? Throughout the storm, people moved the barriers or simply drove around them . . . and found themselves stuck. Krystal and I listened to the sirens all weekend.

I’m not sure which is worse, though: the people who ignored those signs or the group of kids who thought it’d be a good idea to swim in that same creek – in fact, attempting to swim under the bridge. Remember: the bridge is covered with water – it’d be super easy for someone to hit their head and drown. I don’t feel bad for calling the cops on them.

Then you’ve got the people who think they know better: they can ignore the warnings and the barricades because they’ve lived here their whole life. So they go walking in the river parks or go out to see what’s going on. I don’t care if you know more about hurricanes than anyone else: there’s no excuse to put yourself in danger only to put Emergency Response in danger.

Anyway. If you’re interested in seeing some pictures from our area, check out the Facebook photo feed of The Uprooted Photographer.