Quite a day

Catastrophic flooding hit Wayne County, Indiana today.

A lot of people had much worse days than I did.

Nonetheless, I record my day for posterity:

Didn’t get much sleep due to storms. Maybe 6 hours total in bits and pieces.

Daughter’s school was canceled, parenting scramble resulted.

I made it through 90% of my morning commute to the newspaper office, but then hit road closures due to flooding.

Tried re-routing, couldn’t find a way through.

Decided to stop commuting and start reporting, so I took out my camera and captured photos and video, and talked to people walking the streets stunned at what was unfolding.

I tried not to do the dangerous thing we were telling our readers not to do, driving through flooded road ways, but I may have driven through one or two.

Heard a grinding sound from my car after, telling me how wrong my decision was. A big piece of car bottom covering was bent back and scraping along the road. I tried to repair it in some random driveway in the rain — laying down on the wet ground with water flowing around me — and that didn’t work.

Drove with grinding sound to a better parking lot. Found tape/bungee cord supplies in my trunk and executed a better, but still temporary, repair.

Worked from said parking lot for an hour, uploading photos and posting updates on our website. Cellular data was so slow.

Kept in touch with my team through Slack and phone calls.

Battery backups powering the office network went down. Made a note to get bigger battery backups, but not sure why.

Tried again to get to the office, still no routes available.

Tried just to get to the other side of town I’d come from, still no routes available.

Roads getting worse, sky getting darker. Had to use the bathroom.

Rerouted completely out of town to get clear of flooded areas. Stuffed my packed lunch in my mouth as I navigated still-crazy roads and constant emergency alerts on my phone.

Found a restroom. Called the car repair place.

Drove home. Internet connection was slow, need to call the ISP. Posted more photos and stories.

Decided to assemble a video, posted said video.

NBC Nightly News saw said video, asked if they could maybe use the footage. I said sure.

Kept posting photos and updates. Kept talking with the team, making plans B, C, D and more for how to get the paper out and cover this story.

Talked and texted with friends and community members. Lots of uncertainty, lots of worry, lots of care, lots of resilience.

Saw office is probably flooded. Will have to check it soon.

Emergency alerts continue to go off.

I feel like I did good work.

Tomorrow’s coming soon.