Though we had a different blog planned for today, we were in our editing office this afternoon and looked out to the St. Joseph River that we are on only to find that across the river the streets were starting to flood. Due to a couple full days of raining and literal feet of snow all melting at once, mid-day today the river raised to 11.8 feet higher than normal. Indiana is relatively flat, so the waters have gone up to touch the bottom of many of our bridges within the city, have flooded many of the parks within our city, and are flooding and closing down roads. The waters have completely flooded our park just a minute from our house to the point where trashcans are under water, the duck pond fence is almost completely submerged, and homes, schools, and businesses are starting to flood. (The waters won't reach peak height until some time later tomorrow when it's said that the waters will raise at least a foot higher if not feet higher. Our house is safely on a cliff above the river, so it's highly, highly unlikely that we'll have any flooding issues ourselves. If that were the case, all of the homes and businesses in the downtown South Bend area would also be flooded.)
Late this afternoon & early evening we made it around to 6 flooded areas and on our way home stopped at our park to check out our flooded Leeper Park (we couldn't even drive down our road it is so flooded). While there our mayor, the leaders of the water treatment plant, the fire marshall, etc. were all holding a press conference with the news outlets outside of the school touching the park where people were actively starting to pile sand bags to prevent the water just a foot or two away from breaching into the school. We had already accidentally stumbled upon the water treatment plant earlier in the day and saw that it was about to flood and was getting filled with river water and sadly as is tradition with South Bend (one of days of yore when sewage water would be poured into the river) they stated that if it continues, they'll have to pour more waste sewer water into the river itself, then decontaminate the treatment water at the plant. This is pretty awful as we saw ducks, swans, etc. all day swimming around on the roads next to leaking sewers and eating up what they were finding in the water.
Below are some of the images we captured during late this afternoon and early this evening of February 21st, 2018. Locations include the bridge off of Angela & Riverside, Riverside Dr itself (our street further down), Leeper Park, James Madison, and around the Riverlights across from the Century Center the the bridge at that location.
Last month we were in California traveling through to Santa Barbara when 2 full days of rain caused massive flooding, unprecedented mudslides, and deaths. We avoided the deadly mudslides in Ventura, California and thus were forced to drive 4.5 hours around mountains to get to our destination of Santa Barbara- the city just about 45 minutes north of Ventura. We texted to old professors and friends to make sure that everyone was ok and many of our friends were due to the mudslides taking out homes and roads (the main one being the 101) unable to get to work for 2 full weeks and had to either work from home or in the most expensive housing state in our nation just take no pay for 2 full weeks since the only road to work was closed. Jason is from California and I lived there for 3 years during my MFA in Fine Art Photography and if we've learned anything, it's that the weather throughout the past 30+ years has continued to fly off the tracks irregularly (due to global warming) AND that you are no match for mother nature. The biggest wildfires in U.S. & California history ripped through California just 2 months ago through the end of December causing the huge mudslides last month while earthquakes and other natural disasters like multiple hurricanes and multiple states full of flooding ripped through the southwest of the United States just this fall. It's been a very rough natural disaster past 5 months and many people have died, lost their homes, and been displaced. Our thoughts today went back to California, Florida, and Louisiana flooding from these past 5 months.
Unrelated and less ominous: Coming up soon we will be in Pennsylvania for the Society of Photographic Education conference. We'll be bringing our 3 furry pets with us and get to do a bit of tourism in Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh before and after the conference. We're excited to check out the 3 day conference since we haven't attended a high level photography conference in years. Next week's Weekly Wednesday blog post will be about a formal photography degrees, education, and the extreme benefits of formal educational degrees, while the following Wednesday we will share photos from our trip and the S.P.E. conference itself-! Get ready to nerd out with us. Stay safe, South Bend. **ANYONE displaced from the flooding can take refuge in the O'Brien Center.