I wasn't building a case anymore; I was preparing for a rescue. They had no idea those were the same job.
Frank and I started knocking on doors at 6:00 Thursday evening. We didn't make speeches. We didn't pull out the receipts. We told people plainly that the upstream dam had been removed three days earlier and that the rain forecast for Friday morning was going to put water into the back end of Cedar Ridge: the cul-de-sac, possibly the clubhouse, definitely the East Rim.
"Move your cars to the high side tonight. Move valuables off the basement floor. If you have anyone elderly or any small children in the house, sleep somewhere else."
Some people thanked us. Some asked who'd given me the authority to predict the weather. I told them I didn't need authority; I just needed them to look at the forecast.
The Patels at 408 sent their two kids to grandma's. The young couple with the toddler at 412 packed and drove to a sister's. Mrs. Alvarez refused to leave; her son drove over and slept on her couch. Hal at 404, the old man with the oxygen tank, let us carry his concentrator and three spare cylinders up to his second floor while his wife packed a bag. Frank drove them to a Hampton Inn at 9:30.
We knocked on Karen Whitfield's door. She answered with a glass of wine in her hand and didn't open the screen.
"You're trespassing."
"Karen, I'm telling you as a courtesy: move your car off the cul-de-sac tonight."
"Get off my porch."
"There's going to be water down here by morning."
"There is not going to be water down here because we removed the eyesore causing the runoff problem. That's how you fix drainage, sir."
She wasn't drunk; she just believed what she was saying.
"Karen," I said quietly, "the dam wasn't the obstruction. The dam was the solution."
She closed the door.
By 11:00, we'd visited every house in the runoff bowl and seven on the east rim. About half were evacuated or pre-staged; the other half thanked us politely and went to bed. I drove home and tried to sleep and didn't.
The water arrived at 3:47 Friday morning. I know because Frank texted me at 3:48: "It's in the cul-de-sac."
I drove down in the dark, headlights cutting through rain thickened into a steady pour. The streets weren't flooded yet on the high side, but when I turned onto Ridgeline, my headlights caught water moving sideways across the road. Not pooling—moving. A low brown current sliding toward the cul-de-sac like a hand smoothing a sheet.