The sound of of sirens stopped us in our tracks. As we stop packing our mother’s precious blankets and my father’s miles of rainbow colored notecards. “ You should leave now. In 15 minutes this block will be underwater.” He said to my dad as he stepped out of the ambulance. I was afraid now.

When I was ten I moved to a new house closer to the school. It was in lowest part of town right beside Save-A-Lot, The cheap grocery store,  and the bridge that trains ride on. It was great because I finally had a yard to play in and we were far enough away from the oil refinery that we couldn’t smell it.

I lived there for a long time but in 2007 half of Coffeyville flooded. My dad for most of his life lived in a floodplain, so he was knew what to do during a  flood, so we  just put everything up high in the closets and grabbed our bedding, the valuables that we had time to grab, and a change of clothes and We raced  to my grandmothers.  It wasn’t supposed to flood as much as it did. It was supposed to  only a foot or so but then the levees broke. This caused our house to flood all the way up to the roof. Things went from bad to worse when the water hit the refinery. The oil refinery didn’t have time to close down properly  so not only was a deluge of water heading towards the city but now it polluted with oil and chemicals.

We lived in my grandmother’s basement for what seemed like months. I was very young when this happened.  I barely understood what was going on and the only thing I was upset about was the fact that my gamecube was destroyed. I still remember being excited when Coffeyville was on the news. I was Thrilled as I Watched on television the dozens of water bottles and other trash cut through the black viscous film on the surface of the dirty water.

My dad started his first day as an EMT the day after the flood. So he would always come  home with stories about what he did that day whether it having been helping cutting holes in the roofs of houses or helping people out of flooded apartment complexes. The story That sticks in my head the most happened about a week after we left. My dad came home that night smelling worse than he ever had before ( he was a trashman for several years). When he finally tells us why he smells so bad was because his job that day was to check Save-A-Lot for people but the grocery store didn’t move all the food when they were going to be flooded so for a week a grocery store's worth of food had been steeping in oil-water. He said he could smell the grocery store from a block away. He said When he finally broke the glass of the grocery store he was gagging from how bad the smell was. There wasn’t anyone in the grocery store but that still the story I remember most clearly. 

When we could get back into our house I couldn’t go because I was too little but they took pictures of everything and the entire house was ruined. The walls were black and wavy up until a foot from the roof.The carpet was sludgy and the couches we had in the living room were upside down.The only thing That was even semi-salvageable was one book of family pictures but even then those were heavily oil stained some even to the point of being unusable.

Eventually life settled down and we moved out of my grandma’s house. I will never forget about the flood. It has changed me , shown me that the world is unfair, and proven that when bad stuff happens people can show the best part of themselves.