My son and I stepped carefully along the path of debris from the front yard of destruction to the backyard of despair.  On the back is the burn pile.  Though a grown adult, my son turned his head curiously side to side, looking agape, much like his three-year old son did, at the ruin which had accumulated from the recent flood.  Standing at what would be the perimeter of what would be the burn pile at what would be the end of the day, he asked me, “Are you still angry about what happened with the flood?”.  No one had yet asked me that.  But I had an answer, though borrowed from someone far more eloquent than me.  I said, “Anger is a luxury I can’t afford in times like these”.

I can’t afford to be angry.  To get angry.  To stay angry.  I can’t allow self pity.  Not in times like these.  Three weeks ago, I lost most of my possessions, in a flooded house, and saw my poultry business go south, wet light feathers on lead flood waters.  So, for those of you who think I am angry because you did not show up to help, I can’t afford it.  There is too much to clean up.  For those of you who think I’m not calling you because I am wallowing in self pity, I can’t allow self pity.  There are animals to care for, a dwelling to rebuild, a farm to restore.  Don’t get me wrong.  Fortitude, like anger, has its stages.  One day I’ll hate you, but not today.  One day I’ll cry me a river, but it will have to wait.  Today, I’ll have to be strong, which I never was.

The first response of others to another’s crisis is emotional. Sorrys pour like overflow at a spillway in the hundred year flood.  Next, comes logic.  Expressing sorrow can be an easy sell, an inexpensive as a single cell phone call.  There, you’re done.  Check it off, Anton.  Back to your yoga, Yogi.  After the emotional response, logic kicks in.  It should be obvious that something could be done for a friend in need following a devastating flood. The single word flood, even for the thick, should not require a treatise on urgency, devastation, and despair.  But that’s your attitude as a flood survivor…when you are reflecting unto yourself, the victim.

Doing something for someone must take time, will take effort and might even cost money.  This is the over balancing rational of the person who would be help?  Logical questions arrive to rescue them.  Can I afford it in these times?  Can I back out of commitments made while way back in those illogical emotional times?  Can I present convincingly, to the needy and, more importantly to myself, the arguments that justify never showing up and never even calling, for the time being?  Yes!  It just takes attitude.  And then there’s bonus time.  After the victim’s industrial dumpster is overflowing, his wet salvaged coin and currency collection is basking in the sun, and four stray pit-bulls stock his livestock on his semi-abandoned farm, you can pile on with euphemisms.  What’s the matter there, you’ve been keeping a low profile.  Hey, you must be busy there,  ’cause there’s been a failure to communicate.  I guess you’re angry there, you’ll get over it, you always do.

There must be fifty ways to leave your friends in a lurch, many strategies to backing out or never backing in to helping those who suddenly need dumpster service.  Let’s look at three.  Strategy One: You don’t really want to help.  If you don’t really want to help you will use any excuse, it won’t be complicated.  I have to mow the grass.  You know fast it grows in these times?  I must clean the pool.  Don’t you pity me, it takes so much time?  I have Yoga class today (just in time).  Did you know I have perfect attendance (wish me luck!)?  With Strategy One, made-up excuses run out quick.  The reluctant would-be-helper will quickly look to the victim to supply the excuses.

• I didn’t like your attitude – when I told you I had to mow.
• I expected you to call me daily – after I cleaned the pool.
• I assumed you would call me back immediately – after I texted that I wasn’t coming.
• I know you’re angry – so I won’t show up.

Ad nauseam.

Strategy Two of Help avoidance is justification.  Remember, these are strategies of logic which soon follow reactions of emotion.  Justification!

• Why should I help you when my problems are bigger than yours?
• You have (pick one) insurance, income, in-laws, and I don’t.
• I can’t spend money I don’t have on things I can’t afford for someone who has never been there for me.

With the airtight alibi, which justification yields, you miss the subtlety that reality could bring to self serving faulty perception.  The victim can bypass debate with the justifier’s logic and move him direct past “NO GO” to the stunning conclusion that: When a disaster victim needs help, they don’t care what your excuse or justification is. “I needed help and you didn’t show up”.  It is without measure.

Strategy Three of Help avoidance is being busy.  I’m busy.  I actually prefer this one.  It leaves the disaster-victim-needing-help nowhere to go.  With Strategy One, you have excuse by number.  With Strategy Two, you have excuse by values.  But with Strategy Three you have no excuses.  Can’t be challenged or debated or rationalized or justified.  I’m not coming.  End of story.  Kinda.  Well sorta.  Busy is the antidote to most problems in life.  If you lost everything in a flood, get busy.  If you lost your income and are waiting for financial collapse, get busy.  If you have a small business and too much work to rescue other people, save yourself, stay busy.  You might lose a friend because you’re too busy to help them or call them or think about them.  But if you are busy, you have plenty to keep you that way, and another friend will wander in off the street as soon as that ex-friend departs on the next flood waters and leaves an opening. A.M.F.

What is it you can’t create in another person?  I’m going to elect the emotion empathy.  What is it you can’t explain in yourself?  I’m going to give the word gratitude.  My precious emotion is gratitude.  The number of that beautiful beast is 27.  Twenty-seven helpers showed up yesterday to clean-up my washout.  I did nothing to create the empathy they felt…it was already there.  They did everything to explain the gratitude I feel for their effort…it was created by them.  Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect.  My Damascus Moment always rolls in on a wave of disaster and leaves me on a higher dryer place, with a bit wiser perspective.  Thanks be to those with innate empathy.  Praise be to the emotional option of empathy, resulting in my emotional gratitude, symbolized by the number 27, and emblematic of a higher place which reason, justification, and self-importance never reach.  I have to go.  I’m very busy you know.

When you are first fleeing disaster, you don’t stand on ceremony.  When you are next faced with survival, excuses don’t sit well.  By the time you reach out for recovery, you know where your friends lie.

Three things were scheduled.  Two things were started.  One thing got done.  So it goes daily at the delta formerly known as Sawmyl Synders.  I wanted to finish pressure washing the mud out of the back section of my barn.  I hoped to clean and sweep the now sparse bathroom for appearance this weekend.  I wished that my giant dumpster was delivered early so that the bags of maggots and summits of sheet rock could be disposed.  The dumpster arrived!

I worked most of the morning moving boxes and shelves in the back of the barn.  After this step, the large shelves could be moved and boxes and tubs could be transferred from other shelves and the process could be repeated.  The first layer of creek mud was washed out off the cement floor through two holes in the corners of that slick barn.  Next it was super squeegee time.  In two hours the cement floor was no longer slippery – but I was.  Time for a big break.

I intended to air dry – myself – in the dwelling’s air conditioning while doing some work online.  However, my little Verizon brick (internet connection device) broke.  The battery had swelled, maybe it had exploded, for sure it had tried to say goodbye to me with a suffocated display.  What to do?  See the thieves at Verizon of course.  But not before taking a cold water shower in a debris scattered tub behind a filthy but serviceable plastic curtain.   At the Verizon store, in the early afternoon, on a 90+ degree day I got the call.  The boys from Caron Services came through with my dumpster order early.  But I only had a few minutes to turn around and go north back to the homestead.  Just made it.

As I stood and watched the dumpster delivery guy leave, with my boot bottoms firmly caked in mud, and another slick film beginning to form on my pale freckled and scarred skin, I thought of only one thing.  Beer.  Dark beer.  Strong dark beer.  Cold strong dark beer.  All I had was empty beer bottles.  Lots.  It was almost three so I had to go directly to pick up my own sweet Vee.  Don’t be late and don’t be hurried, if you do she might be worried.  Burma Shave.

Today, I have a FEMA Disaster Recovery guy coming at 9 A.M. and he wants paper proof that I own the house.  All of that is soaking somewhere on the grounds.  Today, I have a friend coming over to take a look at my small engine equipment to see if he can do anything to fix them after the flood.  Today, I must complete pressure washing the barn and sweep the bathroom.  And of course there is the dumpster.  When all you have is dumpster, mud, sweat, and empty beer bottles, be sure to remember that – every descent has an ascent in it’s future.

Three things are planned today – deal with FEMA, finish the barn cleana, and load stuff at the dumpster arena.  I hope I don’t make too much noise for the non-existent neighbors or that the stink I stir up doesn’t bother the wildlife.  I could use a beer right now.

Saturday is fast approaching.  I ordered a three cubic yard dumpster for Friday.  It’s Wednesday and I feel like…

I can’t pull my car out of the mud and I’m in the middle of nowhere and its pouring rain and I can’t get the top back up and my paycheck’s all blurred and my foot went right through the gas and my girl’s screaming bloody murder because she’s scared of the dark and a stroke of lightning splits my motor in half and my suit’s shrinking up fast and I start up the windy road on foot and sixty yards of barbed wire hits me right smack in the puss and we both fall down in the mud and then a wild animal comes over and runs away with my shoes and my car blows up suddenly and my windshield-wiper ends up in my mouth and I can’t move and the mud’s rising up to my nostrils and I’m sinking fast and I don’t hear my girl screaming anymore…

I need to occupy my mind.  I need to think about the things that need to be done and stop thinking about the terrible things that might happen next.  How about tasks for the work crew this weekend?  I cleaned the house flooring of debris so that preparations for construction can proceed.  I pressure washed the barn and garage so that no one slips and falls doing their appointed tasks.  I picked up broken mirrors and scattered nails so that cuts and punctures are minimized.  I made a list of tasks.  What tasks did I leave out?

Here’s a task: rock raking.  When the flood waters rushed over Nichols Sawmill Road and out of the angry creek, my pebbles were displaced.  Someone has to take a long and stealthy rake and smooth out the driveway path.

Here’s another task: timber stack attack.  There is a stack 200 landscape timbers which was carried across the back pasture and is now pinned against the far fence.  Someone has to pick them up, two by two, and re-stack them back in the center of the field.

Here’s one more: feeder foundation fixing.  There are four fifty-pound capacity poultry feeders lifted by the flood waters and carried on the cement blocks.  Those heavy wooden contraptions need to be scraped and emptied and returned to the appropriate cement block pedestal.

Here’s a task: Coop II resurrection.  This chicken coop is impassable and needs to have several items removed before even its chicken feeder can be accessed.

Here’s a task: rose garden flowerbed timber job.  The entire landscape timber border was lifted out of place in tact and needs to be re-positioned by a couple of strong bodies.

Here’s a task: wooden telephone pole removal.  A ten foot piece of telephone pole is wedged near the front porch and needs to be removed by a couple of strong bodies.

Here’s a task: barn frontage trash removal.  Several garbage bags and cans of refuse sit outside the barn and need to betaken to dumpster.

Here’s a task: refrigerator extrication.   My garage refrigerator was picked up by flood waters and placed in the middle of my sixteen-foot trailer but must be removed and moved to the salvage yard.

Here’s a task: lumber load-up.  I have several pieces of dimensioned lumber which needs to be gathered together into the yard known as the picnic area.

Here’s a task: wire roll-out.  The different types of fencing wire on the trailer and in the field need to be put in one place for future organization.

Here’s a task: burn notice.  Anything that will burn without fumes or hazard should be pile in the back for later blaze.

My wife and I, our house flooded last May.  Our son, his house flooded last April.  His friend, her house was flooded, too.  Besides all of us now living together in our son’s under construction, small, three-bedroom house, what else do you think we have in common?  For flood victims, a flood being a huge problem is a common condition.  It’s not just the loss.  The living arrangements are desperate, the cleanup is critical, and life must go on for pets and livestock.  Flood victims deserve some consideration from those who are made aware but who are not affected. Every caring person should think this way.  However, that’s just the way flood-way victims think.  This thinking may not be in the consciousness of their BFF’s – who know of it but never show up to push a mop.  I have been pondering this phenomenon in my new swamp dwelling for the past couple of weeks and I have concluded that there is simply something that I don’t know or understand.  The BFF’s called and said, very convincingly, how sorry they were about the flood and the loss.  Each BFF said to “let them know” what he or she could do for us, the victims.  The BFF’s said they mourned our loss and volunteered to help.  But those who most easily say sorry are most prominently no-shows.  I thought surely they would help, if they could help.  Surely, they’ll find the time.  Surely, they’ll consider our past and our future and act in the present.  We are, after all, BFF’s, am I right?

An answer to my puzzlement, puzzlement over BNS (BFF No Shows), came softly and subtly.  Our son’s friend, who is staying with us, told me of her parallel experience.  Her BFF, having all the equipment and skill for flood mitigation, never stopped by, never seriously offered a reason why, never said boo.  But then at a recent gathering, pictures of her dwelling “deluge” were shared.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  No verbal pleas could bring the BFF over to that disaster area but pictures brought over reality.  The BFF understood now, maybe even felt guilty.  Even though the facts were spoken clear enough, recognizing what they meant – was missed.  I had my answer to my own conundrum.  It wasn’t something I was missing or misunderstood.  That something was them.  Was it that the carefree BFF’s couldn’t see the forest for the debris, couldn’t hear the words above their own self-importance, couldn’t feel the pain for their lack of compassion?  No.  They were BUSY!

So, if a certain busy BFF didn’t show up at your after flood party, you aren’t alone.  If they continue for weeks to tell you how busy they are and never show up, it’s just because they’re not getting the picture.  It may be, they surmise, that if you are STILL really needing help, that you will call them – again – to find out what time they’re NOT showing up that day.  It may be that they’re expecting you to offer them a hot meal if they show up at your place after they have completed their daily routine.  Perhaps, one day in the future, they plan to help you for two hours at four o’clock in the afternoon, but only if they can take a one hour break for that hot meal you promised.  Maybe, after their yard is mowed, their pool is cleaned, their errands are run, their hours are worked, their other BFF’s are helped, and their yoga class is over, they’ll show.  Surprise!  They still haven’t gotten the picture yet.

My flooded dwelling may qualify for additional government funding if it is certified as substantially damaged.  All I need is a local government building inspector to certify that my dwelling was substantially damaged (i.e. more than 50% of market value).  Montgomery County Texas does not employee building inspectors therefore acquiring a certificate is a Catch 22.  I have called everyone from FEMA to city to county to my insurance agent to private building inspectors, I have not even received a return phone call let alone an answer.  So, drink up!  Following are extracts, paraphrasing and commentary on the explanation of the Increased Cost of Compliance documentation at the FEMA.gov site on that confounding creation of circuitous conduits known to the naive as the inter-web.

~ICC Coverage

If your home or business is damaged by a flood, you may be required to meet certain building requirements in your community to reduce future flood damage before you repair or rebuild. To help you cover the costs of meeting those requirements, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) includes Increased Cost of Compliance (ICC) coverage for all new and renewed Standard Flood Insurance Policies.

! How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much?

Flood insurance policyholders in high-risk areas, also known as special flood hazard areas, can get up to $30,000 to help pay the costs to bring their home or business into compliance with their community’s floodplain ordinance.

COMMENTARY – One demolition estimate was $15 a square foot which puts my demolition cost at $15,000.  An estimate for a cement foundation was approximately $7 a square foot which puts my new foundation cost at $7,000.  Setting up a manufactured home can run around $5,000.  The rough total here, with the cost of an actual dwelling not included is $27,000.  The ICC stipend is $30,000, as every jerk in every conversation would sarcastically spit, you do the math.

Four Options FEMA Features for Flooded Fugitives

1. If your community determines that your home or business is damaged by flood to the point that repairs will cost 50 percent (fifty %) or more of the building’s pre-damage market value. This is called substantial damage.
2. If your community has a repetitive loss provision in its floodplain management ordinance and determines that your home or business was damaged by a flood two times in the past 10 years, where the cost of repairing the flood damage, on the average, equaled or exceeded 25 percent of its market value at the time of each flood. This is called repetitive damage. Additionally, there must have been flood insurance claim payments for each of the two flood losses.

~How to file an ICC claim