Suspended

Levees hanging in there - photo by Robert Stehle

Yesterday, I worked for almost 14 hours in a makeshift newsroom on the 3rd floor conference room overlooking the valley. From up there, you couldn’t tell anything was wrong or that thousands of people were anxiously watching the river teetering over the levees like a water glass about to overflow. There’s the brief moments, the holding breaths – will it hold or will it fail? Ultimate suspension. I’m still exhausted from yesterday. The thought of being on a computer ctrl alt del F12 tab shift click makes me lose brain power and I’ll write later about the work and the newsroom and the chaos and the miswires, lost connections, difficulties we managed to overcome moving an entire newsroom with all our technology to a hotel room. But I can’t or don’t want to think about work right now. I’m glad we are safe, that we never lost power even though the city cut off gas and utilities downtown. I’m glad the water pressure boiling up from underground from a cemetery didn’t make the levee fail. I’m glad for all the people who helped brace the walls with sand and mud – who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t – the river already seeping through the flood gates cracks. I’m glad our friends’ house was safe and I hope the people whose houses were not can rebuild. How humbling to be at the mercy of a river. We are so small and will always be.