PHS 100A Environmental Studies
Warner Pacific College
October 30, 2011
There
always has been and there always will be some form of natural disaster
occurring in the world at any given time.
Some natural disasters are worst than others but one thing is for sure,
once you have seen a disaster first hand you will never forget it. There are many different causes of
natural disasters by the weather and by the earth. The sheer raw power that is demonstrated by the environment
that we live in is a testament to just really how small and helpless we can be
when the nature decides to flex its muscles. My personal experience with a natural disaster can in the
form of rain, which brought the floodwaters.
I was born and raised in Southern
Illinois. In the summer of 1993
the entire Midwestern part of the United States flooded. I will never forget seeing the 550
acres of horseradish, corn, and soybeans I worked every day of my childhood
being twenty feet under water. There
was water as far as you could see in some areas for miles at a time with only
the top of an occasional tree here and there breaking the surface of the
water. The Mississippi river was
forty miles wide in some areas and the farm was only twelve miles from the
river. I can still remember seeing the people and animals on the rooftops
waiting to be rescued by the National Guard.
The great flood of 1993 was one of
the worst natural disasters in U.S history. It occurred because of the unusually high rainfall amounts
that fell during June through August 1993. The rainfall totals surpassed 12
inches across the eastern Dakotas, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska,
Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. More than 24 inches
of rain fell on central and northeastern Kansas, northern and central Missouri,
most of Iowa, southern Minnesota, and southeastern Nebraska, with up to 38.4
inches in east-central Iowa. These amounts were approximately 200-350 percent
of normal from the northern plains southeastward into the central United
States. From April 1 through August 31, precipitation amounts approached 48
inches in east-central Iowa, easily surpassing the area's normal annual
precipitation of 30-36 inches. Ten states received more than twenty days of
continuous rain during July and another eight or nine days during August. This is more consistent of the kind of
weather the area would receive during early spring instead of the middle of
summer (Larson, 1993).
The death and destruction from this flood was
enormous and is one of the most costly in loss of life and financial
resources. It is estimated that
over fifty people died because of the flood and that there was over fifteen
billion dollars in damage. Some
small farming communities were completely wiped off the face of the earth and
have never been rebuilt. Thousands
of people were evacuated, some never returned to their homes. There were over
10,000 homes destroyed and hundreds of small towns were impacted with more than
seventy communities completely submerged under the floodwaters. Over 15 million
acres of farmland were destroyed some of which would not be useable for years
to come since the fields lost their top soil because of the rushing waters. Barge traffic on the Missouri and
Mississippi Rivers was stopped for nearly 2 months. Bridges were out or not
accessible on the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa, downstream to St.
Louis, Missouri. On the Missouri River, bridges were out from Kansas City,
downstream to St. Charles, Missouri. Numerous interstate highways and other
roads were closed. Ten commercial airports were flooded. All railroad traffic
in the Midwest was halted. Numerous sewage treatment and water treatment plants
were destroyed (Larson, 1993).
I
remember the older folks in my town and my elders telling me about previous
floods in the area over the years. They said that every hundred years are so
that there would be a great flood more devastating than the other floods were
in the past. They were right and I
can say from witnessing this experience firsthand I saw both acts of selfishness
and unselfish acts happen during this time of natural disaster. There was individuals who were the
hero’s and there were others who were thugs praying on the weak moments of
others for their own benefit. Some
towns came together to overcome this disaster while other towns fell out of
unity and eventually apart never able to recover from the flood. For me I saw the town I grew up in
rebuild and the farm came back to life again and still produces horseradish,
corn, and soybeans to this day. I find it very funny that three years later
when I was living in Oregon it flooded here in1996. I can say from personal experience while most Oregonians
were shocked by the damage they say here in the Willamette Valley that they
truly do not understand the meaning of the word flood.
Mark Twain said a hundred years ago, the
Mississippi River "cannot be tamed, curbed or confined, you cannot bar its
path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over and laugh
at." I believe he said
it best for those of us who chose to live by any river. I also believe that there will be
another flood like this again someday.
God’s word says that it rains on the just, as well as the unjust.
References
Withgott,
J., & Bennan, S. (2011). Environment: the science behind the stories
(4th ed.). New York, NY. Pearson
Benjamin Cummings. ISBN-139780321715340
Retrieved
October 30th, 2011
Retrieved
October 30th, 2011
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