The flood may be over, but we've still got trouble

Since there are something like two people in the entire world who know this blog exists, and since you both know about last week's flooding in southern Missouri, I won't recap the details.

Well, the news crews are gone. So is the National Guard. The rivers are all back in their banks, and the levees are being repaired.

By the time I got home, the flooding was over, but the problems weren't. East Side and South Poplar Bluff are in shambles. These are the two lowest-lying areas of town. East Side is almost completely African-American, and both are predominantly poor. These two parts of town are physically separate from the rest of Poplar Bluff: East Side by the river and South Poplar Bluff by railroad tracks. None of these people could afford flood insurance anywhere, let alone in a flood plain, so now all they can do is wait. They've been told not to even begin cleaning up until FEMA shows up to assess the damage, which, in many cases, is almost 100%. In most places, if you drove through today, you wouldn't think there had been a flood. The two neighborhoods look more like the residents just decided one day that it would be easier to throw their trash in the yard rather than carry it to the curb once a week.

No one in Poplar Bluff was killed or seriously injured. You can credit that to the National Guard, the Butler County Sheriff's Office, and the State Water Patrol, who evacuated the neighborhoods before much of the flooding began. But, now that the water is gone, there isn't much any of them can do, either.

The Red Cross is operating out of the convention center for the rest of the week. The Salvation Army is operating out of a Baptist church north of town, and nearly every church is running a drive of some kind. My church is collecting cleaning supplies. A Pentecostal church in South Poplar Bluff is asking people to bring in old clothes. The local Rescue Mission is serving meals to flood victims across the street from the convention center, which, up to a few days ago, was housing evacuees. My brother and I were there today moving crates of water and cleaning kits for the Red Cross, and we didn't see any signs of anybody living there. I don't know where they've gone, but they haven't gone home. At least not all of them. Many of them don't have homes to go to.

My mother is an elementary principal. Her school district covers all of East Side. One of her students came to school one day wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the day before. He knocked on her door and poked his head into her office on the second day the Poplar Bluff school district came back after the flooding. He came in and sat down in front of her desk, and looked down at his feet. "My mom asked if you had any extra clothes and maybe a pair of shoes somewhere here," he said. The boy's family had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing, and had been living at the convention center. She said she didn't, but that she would find him some. She called one of the churches and they found some clothes in his size. I heard my dad tell her that he would go buy him some shoes after school the next day.

I've never been prouder of my town than I am when I look at the way every public entity, every church, every charitable organization and every free hand has come together to make sure these people's needs are met. But the only factor that seems to be missing is FEMA. I've heard they're here, but I haven't seen any sign of them. And, at the moment, nothing can really happen until they show up.

Now that CNN and everybody else is gone, there is kind of a feeling that the world has forgotten about all of this. So please keep praying. We're still here.