The Flood of 2009

I know that the floods in Atlanta made the national news a few weeks ago, but I'm just now posting pictures. Sorry! This first one was taken Monday night, when the rains first started getting heavy. Nathan had the idea to run around outside in the rain, simply because we were adults and didn't have parents telling us that we would catch our deaths. I think we lasted three minutes and two mailboxes up the street before it got cold and I imagined slimy things between my toes. We went inside and took a picture of our soaked selves, just for fun.

Tuesday it rained heavily - and I mean HEAVILY - all day long. By the end of the school day, all after school activities were canceled (the ball fields were flooded all the way to the top of the bleachers!) and parents were instructed to pick up their kids, as road conditions were worsening. When I got home from school, Nathan was eager to go down to the new bridge by our house to see the swollen river, but I was too scared! He took Aaron, our friend and neighbor, and came back in about 30 minutes. Nathan reported that he saw our headmaster at the bridge - "with HIS wife," he added - and that I wouldn't be having school the next day. Sure enough, about an hour later, I got a text from my secretary letting me know about school being canceled. On the radio we kept hearing that the rivers and creeks were overflowing into people's homes and business and even onto major highways!

The next day, the perimeter highway around our city was shut down completely, and most schools and businesses in the area were closed, including Nathan's and mine. So... I slept in and then got brave enough to go to the bridge the next day with Nathan. These are the pictures we took there.

This is a picture of the Chattahoochee River. It was about four times its usual width. It overflowed into our backyard "lake" and started a current.

Yes, that's a semi truck underwater, just about to float away.

The left side of the picture shows these train cars about three fourths of the way underwater. On the right is a business right next to our neighborhood.

This is the cemetery right across the street from our neighborhood. The river was covering about a third of the graves there.

We praise God for his goodness and mercy that we are safe and dry, and there was no damage to our property.