Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
How To Survive the Flooding
There's a reason they call it a FLOOD plain. Might as well build your house in the Everglades.By Bob Wire, 5-26-11
Houdini surveys the swollen Clark Fork from the bank of Caras Park in Missoula. Will he jump in if he sees squirrel-shaped flotsam? Yes he will, because he doesn't have the brains God gave a dog.
The flood is here; it’s going to be the biggest flood in 15 years, maybe 50 years. Maybe a hundred years. Who knows? All I know is that I’ll be watching it safely from high up on a hillside, hoping a tornado doesn’t sneak up behind me.
From record snowfall last winter to relentless rains this spring, state agencies and weather forecasters have been warning us for months that when melt-off begins in earnest, we’ll be looking at ten pounds of river in a five pound bag.
But how can anyone be surprised that their driveway is now a boat ramp? All you needed to do was consult the mother of all weather forecasting tools, the Holy Bible. It’s right there in the Book of Genesis (Peter Gabriel version, not Phil Collins), chapter 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Especially in thy Fox News talk shows.” Then in chapter 14, God says to Noah: “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; I have not invented cypress yet. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch, marine epoxy if you can find it. And have a buffet. And it would behoove thee to outfit thine ark with a righteous Evinrude, with the power of one hundred and twenty-five horses.”
God had already told Noah that He was going to destroy the earth because mankind was made up of squirrely chuckle-heads who were messing up His vision for a worldwide planned community, but it was at this point that Noah realized exactly how He was going to do it. After all, the Lord had not asked Noah to build a Divine Parachute or a Fire & Brimstone-Repellant Barn or a tornado-proof Root Cellar of Salvation. It was going to be a flood.
So, once the Lord gave Noah the specs for the boat, He said this: “For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die.” Not much ambiguity there. The Lord was royally pissed. He was apoplectic. He was spitting a little bit with every sacred command. But Noah did built the Ark, and he managed to fill it with a matched pair of every beast on the Earth. Luckily for Noah, this was before permits were required for such an enterprise. Unfortunately, the Ark was piloted by an ancestor of the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Ark capsized and sank to the bottom of the Dead Sea when all the animals onboard stampeded to the same side of the boat at once to get away from the fireworks display.
Now the flood is here. Television newscasters stand crotch-deep in muddy rivers and give us instructions on how to prepare for the coming inundation. The first thing they tell you is to buy plenty of water. Um, hang on a sec while I break out my irony board. Really, though, that’s like telling people in Tornado Alley to run out and get a box fan. And then there are the sand bags. People within a mile of the rivers, or anywhere in the floodplain, are surrounding their properties with hundreds and hundreds of sandbags. They’re doing the right thing, but only halfway. They need to fill those bags not with sand, but with concrete mix. That way, they’ll never have to worry about rising waters penetrating their perimeter again. Ever.
Fishing access points have been closed up and down the Bitterroot and Clark Fork Rivers in western Montana. Will this even make a difference? Seems like every spring, no matter how high the rivers get, some poor, Hamms-addled schlub still insists on going fishing, and falls off a log or something and gets swept away in the roiling runoff, like that fat dumb ass in Willie Wonka. People will still fish, even if the rivers rise so high that you’ll need waders just to get from the fly shop to the truck. They just won’t catch any fish, because the fish are all taking paid leave till this flows over.
The bottom line is that once or twice a generation, the rivers flood like crazy. If we don’t respect this fact enough to leave room for the water to expand and recede in its channel, then we are listening to the wrong people. It’s like my friend Steve says: If you’re going to build your house in a flood plain, you better get used to having catfish in your kitchen.
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On the other hand, when this cold and rain makes it over the Continental Divide, and heads for the Atlantic, the droughty hot air from the Gulf will be there to meet it and spawn another bout of tornados from hell. I guess what I am saying is that if the Almighty Cod, or whatever, would be kind enough to do a sun spot deal that warmed up the Far West, let some sun shine in, a lot of those tornados would not happen. My apologies to Al Gore, Junior, for our ass freezing winters the last couple of years are keeping him from trading carbon credits in volume enough to challenge Carlos Notso Slim Helu' for richest flim flam man in the world title. Be patient, Al Junior, your pet rock scheme will bear fruit someday.
So,when the rivers reach blivet stage-guys will try to fish,some will fall in due to intoxication,or stupidity,or a combination of both,
others will try to take pictures and videos to send to the weather channel-and become a sound bite themselves.
Me, I'm staying home till the blivet,clusterf*ck or whatever you want to call it is over-when the water recedes-fishing will be better,and there will be a few less dumb asses on the water.
Nice version of the Noah's Ark story!
3 sticks of dynamite in the Osage river & Jay had a basket full
and was back on shore before the conservation men showed up...
Focus...intent...fish...no screwing around...time to get drunk and have a fish fry.
Funny thing about how this country has changed in my lifetime. In 1960, to get a degree in ag or engineering, at the Land Grant college or university, you had to pass a physical fitness test the first week of your freshman year, and if you did not pass, it was a Fitness PE class on you schedule. Same with being able to swim. You had to pass the swim test, or you had to take swimming in PE. All males had to take two years of ROTC at a Land Grant School....but another requirement of that ag or engineering degree was the class on practical explosives. Yep. It was a requirement to learn how to use explosives in farming and engineering, and in forestry school. Practical use of dynamite and fertilizer to clear land, dig ditches, shoot rock pits, and level big erratics that stuck their heads above the subgrade and were too big to dig out. I don't think there was any mention in the curriculum about fishing with dynamite, but loggers some times used up a half stick in some hole in the crick to stun a steelhead or two. I heard that, at least. And in those days, we did not have anyone blowing up buildings and people, except if you were connected to the Mob and a two timing judge maybe, one who collected bribes and still ruled against his benefactors. Sometimes they blew up with their Lincoln Town Car. When the ignition was engaged.
Don't even think you can go buy a box of stumping and clear some ground. Not going to happen. You just can't keep the powder in your garage anymore or cans of caps on the tool bench. No hell box in the garage on the shelf by the flask of mercury you used to work the little mining claim. And we are a better nation for it. In a pig's fanny.