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    With all the stories of flooding and hurricanes, my mind returns to an event on June 8, 1974. Other than it started raining at about 8 AM, it seemed a typical Saturday morning. Heavy torrential rain continued through the morning. Our five- and six-year-old sons were enthralled with the pounding rain.

    "Hey, Mom! Come look! It looks like we're in the middle of a river!"

    I glanced out the window past his head, and my heart skipped a beat. He was correct. The rain was coming so fast it was stacking up, and I couldn't see the grass or ground underneath the flowing water. We lived on the top of a large sloping hill, so this was quite remarkable. The hair began to rise on the back of my neck. I had never seen it rain this hard, and it had been doing so for hours. Water was pouring out of the sky with such force that it couldn't run off fast enough.

    I began pacing the floor from window to window. Every view looked like we were in the middle of a large moving river. More pacing. "Do we have any leaks?" 

    "No," my husband called out. "I've checked in the attic and all-around inside."

    I returned to pacing like a caged animal. 

    "When will this stop?" I hoped the boys didn't notice the edge in my voice.

    A little before noon, the sky cleared and the rain stopped. We later learned we had received about a foot of rain in less than 4 hours. We gulped down a quick lunch and headed outside. We were all stir-crazy and ready to see where all the water went as we explored the outdoors. The boys wore their boots to splash in the puddles.

    We lived in the small Arkansas town of Siloam Springs. It was built in the Ozark Mountains and had the picturesque Sager Creek meandering through downtown. Unfortunately, Sager Creek made a right turn in the park downtown and then went behind a row of stores.

    Our house was located on a hill above downtown. We walked a couple of blocks over to stroll down the street that extended down the main road. After about two blocks, we saw that Sager Creek had left its banks and begun extensive flooding. Several young men scrambled to push the parked cars up the street to higher ground to get them out of the advancing water.

    We decided to walk down the street a block to our left. This took us onto a road that ended on a bluff overlooking downtown. By the time we arrived at the end of the road, we could already hear the roar. We were looking down on the rapidly flooding downtown area. We were about one story above the edge of a raging Sager Creek that quickly was rising and swallowing everything in its path. I was transfixed by the power of the water racing into, through, and over obstacles. It seemed incomprehensible to be watching logs, furniture, and vehicles bobbing along like children's toys.

    We were standing above downtown and would ordinarily have seen the stream approaching through the valley to our left, traveling through the large park in front of us, and then turning to our right, where it would travel behind a number of the stores on the main street approaching the park. However, a destructive flood filled the entire area in front of us and to our right. As we watched, the raging torrent rammed into the stores close to the right turn. The debris in the water was crashing violently into the front glass of the stores. A large fabric store was the first to be demolished. The expansive front windows were smashed, opening the way for the water to surge against the back wall. The back wall collapsed in agonizingly slow motion over a few minutes. 

    Another business directly in front of us was surrounded by water. Soon, we watched employees scrambling onto the flat roof through an opening they had cut. By now, the water was not far below our feet, even though we were about one story above the street. The boys wanted to play in the water lapping at our feet without realizing it was a full one-story drop in front of us. I was holding onto them with a white-knuckled grip.

    After watching the fabric store and other stores collapse, I became fearful for the three people on the roof directly in front of us. Would the water keep rising over the top of their building? It was well up the side now. Would their building collapse as the others had?

    A firetruck arrived to attempt a rescue of the people on the roof in front of us. They planned to use their hook and ladder to span the gap. We had to leave to give them room to get to the end of the road to attempt their rescue.

    To my surprise, the flood water seemed to go away almost as quickly as it had risen. By evening, our angry river had returned to our sleepy little stream. Miraculously, no lives were lost since everyone was rescued that needed to be. But the flash flood left strange after-effects. For example, one insurance office had a four to five-hundred-pound safe swept away by the water. Still, stranger, the flood carefully deposited a pink-colored washing machine in place of the safe.

    The cars and trucks we watched bobbing like children's toys in the flood water were left in unexpected places. Some were suspended in trees or on a railroad bridge hundreds of feet from their origin.

    Since that 1974 flood, I have personally experienced the power and fear of hurricanes in Florida and Texas. However, what I discovered that day overlooking the power of a flash flood in Arkansas changed me forever. I had a front-row seat to one of the most condensed and powerful water displays I have ever experienced. It gave me an incredible respect for the catastrophic power of moving water. Thus, it gave me a different visual sense of the destructive forces unleashed on land and animals that a worldwide flood could have, such as in the days of Noah. Flood waters don't necessarily slowly ooze up, and unbelievable power can be unleashed to move and reshape landforms.