Pulling Together

Yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch and I flew over the Santa Clara River in a helicopter. The devastation is staggering (somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars in a county with an annual budget around 15 million). The task of rebuilding is daunting. My wife and I went with our daughter's kindergarten teacher to her house. The front of it looks perfect. But, beyond that, it has been completely sawed off and dropped into the river. She told us that, going through some boxes, she found her backdoor key and started sobbing. Her backdoor, of course, is probably somewhere in Nevada.

The one thing I would want people to understand is that this woman, and all the others around her, did not build in a floodplain. They were several hundred yards away from the river on land that was twenty to thirty feet above the river. The river, though, was flowing at 1,000 times its normal flow. That's not a typo -- 1,000 times. The snow pack was significant; the rain was significant -- and warm -- melting the snow pack to add to the volume of water; and the soil held almost none of the water, because it had been denuded by the huge fires of the past few summers (the product of the worst drought in recorded history). It was a perfect -- or very imperfect -- storm. With that kind of volume, the river went where it wanted.

Equal to the awesome display of nature, I wish people also could grasp the tremendous outpouring of efficient compassion. I wrote earlier about Bishop Clove. Saturday, he must have had over a thousand volunteers helping relocate the people and their possessions from the houses that had been condemned. I was moved by that, as much as by the might of the flood. We have so much to do. I have faith and confidence in the goodness of my community, but we will need help. And we are so very grateful for the help and kind thoughts that others have sent our way.