Floods

I live on an island.  A literal island!  People are always asking me: "you live on a real island?"  Yep, we do!  Alhamulillah, it is paradise on earth.  

Sorry, I don't have a better picture, but if you look carefully, you can see some white approximately in the middle of the picture.  These are the houses on our island, about 80 or so.  The part of the island in the front is a small marina and state park.  The furthest end of the island has campgrounds and a private airport.  As you can see in the background, a highway bridge connects us to civilization; a railroad bridge also passes through our island.  To the right of the houses, you can see a skinny minny strip of blue which is the water on the other side.  Both branches of the Susquehanna River meet and then flow toward Harrisburg, PA.  I literally have one branch of the Susquehanna River a block and a half from my house on one side, and the other branch of the Susquehanna River, a block and a half the other way!  Plenty of mosquitoes and bats over here :( 

Believe it or not, this island has never really flooded in recent history.  Even in the "1979 flood," the grand-daddy of all, by which everything is measured, only the edges of the island flooded a bit and people were rescued by the fire department.  Our house, however, is in the middle of the block, and experienced just a wet basement.  So, when we bought this house, we were not required to have flood insurance.  You would think being a block and a half away from the river on either side would require flood insurance, but it didn't.    Ironically, 1979 was also the year of the TMI nuclear facility incident.  

Ah, why do I bring this up?

Well, a few months ago, I heard a report on the Weather Channel saying that 2010 was going to be the year of floods and flash floods.  They said that places that had NEVER flooded in the past would experience floods.   

So I nudged my husband to get flood insurance anyhow.  Just in case.  I know that everything is up to Allaah swt and at His pleasure.  But I also believe in being prepared as much as possible. 

So, in the past few days, hearing about the flash flooding in Arkansas at that camp site, and in Oklahoma this morning ...

Wow! 

I hope Allaah swt doesn't test us with flooding, but if He does, we will bear it with patience.  And, at least we can be blessed to replace a little of our stuff Insha Allaah.