Never Laugh

The LaFarge concrete plant, shortly after the floodgates were opened on the Resevoir. Those bits of colour you see off in the distance are actually the roofs of cement trucks, poking up out of the water. LaFarge managed to save most of their functional cement trucks, but the ones that got left behind accentuate just how bad the flooding is, and just how high the river has become. Case in point, this cement factory used to draw water right from the river using a suction system. They had problems with it, because the water had to be pulled up a six foot pipe, suspended from the river's edge down to the water, before it reached the pump.

As expected, people were aghast. So much water over so little time. It's been more than 200 years since we've had flooding this bad, and nobody thought that it would happen again. The earth doesn't forget, and floodplains are there for a reason. Yes, damage was done, and I hope everyone's okay after this is over, but we have to ask ourselves what we were doing in the path of the destruction in the first place. Floodplains are like cold lava flows. Just because a volcano only erupts every 200 years, we still know not to build on the volcano. The river is the same. Just because it does not burn, it does not mean it shouldn't be respected.