We've had 4th on Broadway parades for years, we need sandbags once every 30 years or so. Leave the bottle alone until later in the day.

People who purchased homes in low areas, subject to flooding, were aware of the location BEFORE they bought the homes. The homes were purchased at a lower price due to flood potential.

The mayor may be a self-serving idiot, with an agenda to sign waivers so that churches and schools with little children are not protected from alcoholics driving to get even more beer, but I won't blame him for the rain, nor for the property owner's lack of preparation in the event of rain.

Sandbags are all well and good, but closing certain streets when the weather gets ugly would be advantageous as well. For example, the intersection at 48th & W (a quiet residential area near Clapp Park) floods very quickly when it rains, despite the storm drains working as hard as they can. Last night, what with the recent rainfall we've had, the water in that intersection was nearly three feet deep and and moving very swiftly. And there is always a certain number of idjits who refuse to slow down, come blasting through that intersection and drown out their cars-- often leaving them abandoned in the street, creating even more of a traffic hazard. Oh, sure, some folks actually try to get their cars out of the street, if they're sober enough to do so-- but the curbs are flooded, too, to the point where you can't see the sidewalks because they're underwater...and who in his right mind pushes a drowned-out car into deeper water? One homeowner at that intersection had four cars in front of his house, and another stuck in his driveway as of 8:00 this morning....none of them his.

Last night around 12:30 a.m. a pickup full of drunks decided they didn't want to chance the water in the intersection...so they drove up onto and across the lawn of the homeowner who lives on the northwest corner of that intersection. Said homeowner was out of of town for the holiday weekend, not that it would have made any difference to these jerks. They proceeded to tear up his rain-soaked lawn by spinning their tires, and destroyed a big piece of his brick retaining wall trying to gut it out and get the rest of the way across-- sticking the pickup nose-down just long enough for his neighbors to call the police (who responded very promptly, all things considered).

To add ignorance to injury, the aforementioned drunken idjits could have gotten away with it clean, since no one got the pickup's plate number-- just a description: late model white Ford crew cab, a fairly common vehicle in this town. But no...stupidity just had to have its day, because after wrecking the yard and the retaining wall, these DAs drove north on Ave. W....actually, on the grass strip next to Ave. W. (Apparently the driver still didn't want to risk the heavily flooded street.) She then turned east onto 47th and could have been history. But rather than actually leave and make a clean getaway, this dim bulb simply went around the block and came back heading west down 48th St., driving on the sidewalk and in peoples' front yards instead of the street itself. She then stuck her pickup in some other lucky homeowner's front yard, tearing things up by spinning her tires, and there her ignorant self was, still trying to get unstuck when the police showed up shortly thereafter. Her passengers had long since scattered to the four winds, preferring to take their chances with the weather instead of the authorities.

Incidentally, great response time by the responding officer-- no more than fifteen minutes, and he had to walk the last block and a half to the scene because of all the water in the street... he was smart enough not to drive his patrol car into that mess.

I hope this dizzy baggage gets busted real frickin' hard for being drunk behind the wheel and for carelessly and stupidly destroying private property.

"The mayor may be a self-serving idiot, with an agenda to sign waivers so that churches and schools with little children are not protected from alcoholics driving to get even more beer, but I won't blame him for the rain, nor for the property owner's lack of preparation in the event of rain."

Definitely in the Top Ten Most Ignorant Utterances on this website.

Why not make a comparison between cheese and Tuesday while you're at it?

Must be where my Sunday AJ is, floating in a playa. Oh, that's wrong there were no Sunday papers,at least not where I live.