JACKSON — “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.”
Those are the last lines of the last song on the last album John Lennon ever produced. Its title was “Beautiful Child.” It was a sweet song about how much joy he was going to experience watching his beautiful son grow up. Lennon’s eerie prophecy still sends a chill down my spine.
Last week, thousands of residents of North Jackson experienced a big dose of life while they were busy making other plans. Heavy rains stalled over the Pearl River basin north of Jackson, dumping 5 or 6 inches into an already maxed-out Pearl River.
On Thursday (Feb. 13), Reservoir officials issued a dire warning: The reservoir would soon be full, requiring even more water to be released from the spillway. A 38-foot flood was on its way by the weekend. Get ready!
I live in Loho, a neighborhood of 400 homes west of Eastover between Ridgewood Road and I-55. My neighborhood is 50 feet above the rising floodwaters. But I have many good friends who live around the Twin Lakes Circle in Eastover. They were at risk, along with many other neighborhoods
The first step for everybody was a history lesson. What happened to your house in the 1983 flood, which reached a crest level of 39.58? That was 27 years ago. Some folks knew, and others did not.
One of my best friends is Bob Crisler, who lives on Greenbriar Drive, which intersects Twin Lakes Circle. I headed over to his house Thursday afternoon to see what I could do to help. I found Bob and several friends, relatives and neighbors moving out possessions.
Bob was lucky. His sister Jane and her husband, David Westbrook, a Jackson pulmonologist, had recently purchased a four-bedroom condo in Eastbrooke. The condo was basically empty, giving the Crislers a perfect place to escape.
We moved stuff all afternoon. The first to go were irreplaceable photos and family memorabilia. There was a great need for boxes, but plastic garbage bags would do.
Similar activity was occurring all around Twin Lakes Circle. The entire neighborhood was moving, and dozens of moving vans, box trucks and pickup trucks lined the streets.
At some point I called Jim Lowe. Bob and I have both known Jim, a Realtor, for decades. His memory of people, houses and events is uncanny. We tensely waited for the critical news: “What happened to Bob’s house in 1983?” we asked. Then came the bad news: “It got about a foot or two of water.”
Then began a difficult game of chance: If the 1983 flood was 39.58 and this flood is supposed to peak at 38, should you move all the furniture out? Or take your chances? Should you try to raise furniture on cinder blocks or sandbag, or all of the above?
Different houses in the neighborhood made different bets. Some houses were stripped clean. Other houses moved little. Some of it depended on the age of the homeowners and their access to movers or younger friends, neighbors and volunteers.
It was truly inspiring to see the level of volunteerism. Bob and I joked that we were going to save $20,000 in furniture and incur $100,000 in medical costs for our back surgeries.
Bob had good flood insurance, and there was much debate about whether trying to save the furniture made sense because it was insured. This assurance sent us all to bed at a reasonable time Thursday night, but by Saturday afternoon, all the possessions were either cleared out or raised on cinder blocks.
During all of this, Anthony Warren and I were posting updates, photos and snippets of information to the Northside Sun website. Thousands of people were going to our website for updates, so we felt pressure to get what information we could out to our readers, even though multiple other websites had information as well.
The National Weather Service website had a river level graph that was being updated every hour. We made sure the link to that website was posted with every Northside Sun update.
Friday found me at the home of Virginia and Scott Carlton, who live on Riverwood Drive. Their house is two stories and well above flood level, but they believed their basement would get 2 or 3 feet of water. I helped them move out photos, paintings and other basement storage stuff. I was well- rewarded with some frozen meat from their basement freezer, which would not be getting electricity.
Scott had used duct tape to tape a plastic barrier to the carport doors leading to the basement. Scott didn’t have much hope of it working, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. He also had a decent row of sandbags.
My brother-in-law, Terrell Knight, and his wife, Donna, live on Twin Lakes. They were apprehensive but felt reassured because their house didn’t flood in 1983. Just a few feet here and there makes a huge difference. They were able to marshal a moving service to help move critical items out of the house.
By Saturday, the flood levels were coming in a couple of feet below the Thursday projections. I posted a short story on our website with the title: “A Glimmer of Hope.” Hour by hour, the flood was underachieving its projections.
My wife, Ginny, and I swung by to see Terrell and Donna late Saturday night. The reservoir spillway had just ramped up its release level by 20 percent and officials warned of a rapid increase of flood levels over the next six hours. The Knights were exhausted but felt confident they had done all they could do. Terrell told several stories of neighbors helping neighbors and strangers as well. “This has really brought everybody together. That’s a good thing.”
