I watched a sheet of brown water pass through a gap in the boundary fence and curl around a decorative retaining wall on Magnolia Court. The wall was impressive to look at, faced with stone and topped with carefully trimmed shrubs, but water under pressure doesn't admire expensive stonework. It found the soil behind the wall and began carrying that soil away. I called the county drainage emergency number, described the conditions, and sent photographs with location references.
An hour later Hank called. His voice was controlled in the way people sound when they are standing in a bad situation and trying not to alarm whoever is on the other end. "Tom, you've got to come see Magnolia Court. Ray Culvin's garage is taking water, and the Forsyths have it coming through the basement window."
I asked whether anyone was in immediate danger and told him to call emergency services if people needed help. Then I put on my old raincoat and drove the route that remained passable. Cars were lined up along the high side of the street, their headlights reflecting in water that hadn't been there that morning. Homeowners moved through the rain with brooms and shop vacuums, desperately trying to influence a force measured in thousands of gallons.
Ray Culvin was a broad-shouldered man who owned a plumbing-supply business and had never been especially friendly toward me. Now he stood outside his garage in soaked jeans, watching water cross the threshold and spread under shelving filled with tools. He looked up when I approached, his face strained with the effort of not swearing in front of his teenage daughter. "Where's it coming from?" he asked.
"The creek's blocked upstream. The runoff's using your street as a secondary route."
"That can't be right. They told us filling it would help drainage."
"They told you wrong. Can I show you where the water is moving?"
He followed me to the intersection, where a shallow channel had formed along a landscaped median. I pointed out the direction of the land and the way the old stormwater outlets were discharging toward a channel that no longer existed. He studied it with the practical comprehension of a man who knew fluid pressure from his own trade. Then his gaze traveled uphill toward Brenda's house.
"She did this?"
"Her husband's company did the work. I'm still confirming who authorized it. Right now we need to keep people out of the lower rooms and get the utilities checked where the water has reached them."
Six basements flooded during that first storm. Fourteen backyards held standing water into the following day, two garages took on several inches, and one family's heating equipment was damaged. A retaining wall on Magnolia Court shifted enough that the county advised the nearest household to avoid the area pending an engineering assessment. Nobody died, and I was grateful for that. The damage was serious enough to show what the fill had changed without being the kind of catastrophe from which no one could recover.