The same local knowledge that told me last night that our house was safe, is making me deeply annoyed with reporters on the television who keep asking "did we over-react?" On a sunny morning, as waves hit the promenades and children giggle in the back of shot, it may seem like a lot of fuss about nothing, but it wasn't. It was skin-of-our-teeth time. Pictures of wet roads aren't as televisually exciting as helicopters lifting refugees off roofs, but those roads shouldn't be covered in water, and if you're local you know this.
We might not have been lucky, and we couldn't know how it was going to turn out. 20cm of water isn't a lot, but 20cm more and it would have been over the top of the defences everywhere, racing faster than anyone can run. A night in a school hall with all the tea you can drink isn't overreacting when you think of what could have happened.
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