The great Mississippi River runs through downtown Memphis at a normal width of a ½ mile. During the historic flooding of 1937 when 500 people were killed and 20 million acres of land swamped, the river crested at 48.7 feet. This flooding river is rushing by at 2 million cubic feet per second. The Memphis levees are holding, but should one fail, the river will rush in, filling the equivalent of the width and length of a football field 44 feet deep with water in merelyone second.

 

Flooding from hurricanes, torrential rainfall, and dam failures is very dangerous and costly to victims in the path of flood waters. Floods sweep away homes, vehicles and people that do not respect the very real power of rushing water. We are all now more familiar with the levees that broke around New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, rivers that overflowed banks in Nashville Tennessee, and creeks that became rushing rivers around Atlanta in 2009.  These are but a few of the flooding incidents that frequently occur here in the United States with many, many more occurring throughout the world. 
  

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I was asked recently what I felt was the single key to people becoming "switched on" to emergency preparedness. My answer then and now is the same - embracing the concept of self-reliance and emergency preparation is quite literally a conversion process.

People have to embrace these concepts just as they might adopt a new philosophy or join a new religion.  I honestly don't believe being prepared is something on which you can "sell" people. Emergency preparedness and self-reliance are concepts that people embrace as a fundamental building blocks in the foundation of their lives.