Lynne Simpson

There were six deaths in my county alone from the floods in Georgia this week. Every one of them died from drowning when their cars were swept off the road. In some of the cases, maybe the water came from out of nowhere and they didn’t actually drive into standing water. We probably won’t ever know. But driving into water, particularly at night, is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Even if the water is shallow, the road structure may have been compromised, and at best you’ll get stuck on a chunk of collapsed asphalt. You could break an axle or flip your car. Or you could find out that the water is a lot deeper than it looked, and before you know it, your car is out of sight of the road in ten feet of water and sinking fast.

Here are a couple of articles that describe ways to escape a sinking car:

What To Do If Your Car Plunges Into Water

Escape A Sinking Car

In some of the situations in our county this week, maybe escaping from the car wouldn’t have helped. Maybe the water was too fast, and they would have died anyway. But to have a fighting chance, you’ve got to get out of the car, and to do that, you have to stay calm. Oh, and you need to be wearing a seatbelt so you’re less likely to hit your head and be knocked unconscious when your car hits the water.

And another thing — if you don’t know how to swim, learn. You don’t have to master any fancy strokes. Dog paddling and treading water are fine. The most important thing is getting comfortable enough in water that you don’t freak out.

It’s been a rough week for a lot of people. We were very fortunate in that neither of our houses suffered any damage and we were in a relatively safe area. I seem to have this knack for buying houses that are halfway down a hill. If your house is on top of the hill, you get hit with a lot more wind, and if it’s too far down, you may have flooding problems. The basement here is about thirty feet above the lake, and that was a good thing when the pond upstream broke loose and sent a wall of water rushing down into our subdivision.

Overall, John and I have been incredibly lucky. We have to brush our teeth in bottled water for another week, but at least we can take showers and flush toilets. As of this morning, half the county didn’t have water at all.