Today’s column brings the story of a terrible flood in Kerr County, Texas, about 60 miles north of San Antonio. A torrential downpour in the middle of the night turned out to be far worse than the 3-4” originally forecast. The Guadalupe River rose nearly 30 feet in just a couple of hours, sweeping through a Christian girls’ camp.

Rushing water has a force far greater than most people realize. At seven pounds a gallon , thousands of gallons of moving water has a force seven times greater than the volume of water itself.

That much pressure has swept away trees, cars, boats, even houses.

We do not see things like that very often in our area, as rising water here tends to move more slowly. But once one gets to the middle of the state, to our west, where the topography begins its rise to the mountains in the west, the dangers from rushing waters rise significantly.

About 15 miles northeast of Macon, in Jackson County, there is a picturesque state park called High Falls. The park was created when the Tugaloo River, I believe it is, was dammed to create a lake and offer a variety of recreational activities for the area. It is a popular place.

My wife and I have been there many times.

The road that runs through the park, however, heading north, crosses over a precipitous drop in the river bed, which suddenly descends several hundred feet. The sight is astonishing. Most of the time the rock bed is fully covered by the river flowing downstream. We have also been there in times of drought, when the water flow has been so low it is just a trickle, and one can see the entire rocky river bottom, which normally has at least a foot or two of water over it.

But we have also been there after torrential rainfall to the west has caused the river to rise easily 3 to 6 feet, and thunder over that precipitous drop, in flash-flood mode. God help anything or anyone in its path!

Allatoona Lake and Dam, further west, outside Cartersville and east of Rome, has similar topography. The Corps of Engineers operates the dam, and periodically has to open the floodgates to release water from the lake when the Etowah River that feeds the lake gets too high. This is usually done when the spring rains come. The dam was built primarily to stop the city of Rome, a few miles west, from flooding. (We have seen pictures of two-story houses in Rome, flooded up to their eaves. Frightening.)

When the Corps does those periodic releases to make room in the lake for more rains, they sound a claxon horn, 15 minutes or so in advance, to give fishermen below the dam time to get out of the way.

It can be heard for miles, and locals know what it means: Move to higher ground, and quickly!

Toccoa is a small town about an hour’s drive north of Athens, and is home to the Toccoa Bible College. The Toccoa River runs through town, and is normally fairly placid.

At one point it forms a picturesque waterfall as it cuts over an earthen dam, 100 feet or so above the valley where the college is located. The falls are tall, and make for great pictures, if one is standing at the pool at the bottom.

It is an amazing sight.

We have been there too, on some of our weekend visits around the state.

In November of 1977, heavy rains overnight caused the earthen dam above that small college to give way, and flooded the area below, at 2 AM, when folks were asleep in their beds. 37 people were killed. No one was expecting it, so no evacuation was called, with tragic results. This is what happened in Kerrville, Texas, this weekend.

Such events remind us of the terrible power of Mother Nature. When an “Irresistible Force” meets a supposedly “Immovable Object,” usually it is the object that gives way. We ignore that Law of Nature at our own peril.

Our hearts break for the parents who have presumably lost those two dozen campers in the flood that swept through that camp in the middle of the night.

As it did for the folks who lost their lives in the Toccoa flood all those years ago, which we so well remember.

Two lessons emerge from disasters like these.

One is, when calls for evacuation are issued in advance of a storm – heed them!

The other is, treasure every day you have on this earth, and the people in your lives. One never knows when it might be your last – or theirs.

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He may be reached at rafe_ semmes@yahoo.com.