On August 13, 2014, parts of Long Island had severe flooding. It was the worst flooding ever.
When I woke up on the morning of August 13, I started to get ready for work. A warning flashed on my cell phone. It stated “Warning, Severe flooding in your area!” I thought, “This area never gets that bad when it rains. I’d better take the longer route to get to work. Usually, when parts of Eastern Long Island gets flooding, a couple of the streets I take to work gets a little flooded and I have to take another route. But there has never been severe flooding in the 10 years I’ve lived in Central Islip. I started to drive the alternate route to Lowell Ave., and I noticed Lowell Ave., was flooded. I saw other cars drive through without a problem so I followed them to Suffolk Ave. The water came up to bottom of my car door. The next street, Suffolk Ave. was not flooded. So I proceeded. I thought, if I could make it to Veterans Highway, I’d be fine. Veterans Highway is a large 6 lane highway. It was raining very hard. When I turned onto Veterans Highway, the water came half way up to my tires. As I continued driving the water covered most of my tires. I didn’t have far to drive so I thought I wouldn’t have a problem. Sometimes the water was covering my tires and sometimes the water rose as high as the car door. I couldn’t believe Veterans Highway was flooded!! There were police cars sitting on the side roads. There were a few cars abandoned in the street because it stopped working. Other cars were driving slow like myself. It was a nightmare. I had no where to go but forward. I was driving in a low river of water praying the water wouldn’t rise any higher in the terrential rain. When I got to work, the parking lot was flooded. I couldn’t see the ground. I drove to a parking space in the back where the water was low. I walked into the building in water that covered my shins in the pouring rain. When I got off work at 2:30 that afternoon, everything was dry and the sun was shining as if nothing happened. The news reported some of the streets on Long Island was so flooded, cars were floating. Many homes had water damage. I later found out, that kind of flooding only happens once every 200 years. While I was driving down Veterans Hwy., that August morning, I felt like I was in a dream. Veterans Highway was a river. It was dark and raining so hard it was filling the street with more water. When I look back on that day, I remember 15 years ago, when I was studying mysticism and theology. I learned that water is symbolic of consciousness. Water also symbolizes a cleansing of the mind. When I was studying mysticism, I was given a small book from one of the teachers. It is 4 inches long with 64 pages. The name of the book is“The Water”. Inside the book is the Gospel of St. John, King James version. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
