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This is a rant. 

Sumas is underwater again. Five feet underwater. You can go online and search 'Fraser Valley flood 2025*' 'Whatcom County flood 2025' or 'Everson-Nooksack flood 2025' and see everything sunk in five feet of flowing water (search 'Deming flood house') and all the usual stuff you see when shit floods.

OK screech back up beep beep beep Ok so the Biker and I lived in Sumas for over twenty years. We owned a house there, free and clear.  Then, in 2021, came what the city fathers told us was 'a hundred year flood'.  Meaning that an extreme flood in Sumas only happened once every hundred years.  And the city governments in the area of the worst flooding- Sumas, Everson-Nooksack, Lynden, Deming - hammered that phrase 'hundred year flood'. As if to say 'Hey, this sucks, but have a little patience, c'mon where's that smile, stick around and don't be a pussy,  because you'll never see this again in your lifetime! It was just one of those wacky things!'

What pisses me off now is that all the warning signs were there back in 2021.  Everyone in the area had lived through the worsening rains, the longer and longer winters, the repeated and worsening floods.  Shit, even the Feds were saying that a major flood was likely to happen again! That it would come sooner than previously expected! Climatologists from all the major universities in the state were issuing similar warnings!  NOAA was saying this!  FIMA updated the floodplain maps and let everyone know that Things Were Changing!  

The Biker and I have been following the news as it breaks, and seeing it all happen again...you just have to take a break and have a beer.  Discernable in several videos is our former house, once again sitting in 5 feet of flowing dairy waste, ruptured fuel tank effluvia, spoiled sileage tea, and the brown concoction that brews in the septic tank in the back yard. 

I feel a little schadenfreude, though.  Sumas was not a friendly little town.  It was full of rabid Trumpers and people who proudly felt that they didn't have to be smart because they 'believed on the Lord'.  We had no friends in Sumas (everywhere else, just not Sumas), and I still burn with rage when I think of the greedy, house-flipping bastard who bought our place lowball, and then tore up every single fucking plant - and a lot had survived the flood. To this day I would key his car and prop the tires.  

We had the sense to cash in our chips and gtfo.  What seemed initially like a huge financial sacrifice turned out to have been the smartest fiscal decision we've ever made. We knew that all the 'hundred year flood' stuff was BULLSHIT.  And here we are now, high and dry in a lovely historic town counting our cash and watching the Christmas lights twinkle. And the fucker who tore up all my plants is sitting with a sodden, worthless property that he sunk thousands of dollars into 

               AND I HOPE THIS FUCKED HIM OVER BAD.

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*Yes, Canada.  Because people on the American side of the border could not be arsed to repair the flood embankments along a five mile stretch of our river, and those failed, AGAIN, because if you ignore things they'll go away, and if you do a cosmetic 'repair' well hey that counts and everyone is distracted by this IT'S MAGIC WHOOSH.

During the last flood a man was KILLED in the Nooksack-Everson flood right next to where the embankment failed because the volume of water drove him under and he drowned. 

Now, this may be in poor taste, and do bear with me, Laverne, but does it matter or not that the man who was killed was Mexican? I mean, might the loss of a human life matter in the decision to let the Army Corps of Engineers do their job...? or does it matter if the life in question wasn't quite human enough for those in positions of responsibility?

Oh yes. Decisions were made. Real decisions.

And look at where this mindset has left them.