Sylvia was thinking about her parakeet when she noticed the water seeping under her classroom door. Ms. Alabanza didn’t notice, although she was teaching the class about natural disasters, which Sylvia would ultimately end up thinking was quite ironic.
Sylvia knew what irony was, and in fact had just been considering the irony of the fact that her yellow & green parakeet, named Phlegm, was, according to the vet, tonedeaf. ‘How can a parakeet be tonedeaf?’ Sylvia had asked the vet. ‘Does he even know what a tone is?’ ‘That’s an interesting question,’ said the vet, ‘can one be deaf to something if one is not aware of its existence in the first place?’
Sylvia waited for the vet’s answer. ‘I don’t have an answer for you, Sylvia. But one thing’s for sure, and that’s that this here parakeet you’ve so affectionately named Phlegm would never make it on The Voice. Because he’s tone deaf. And what’s more, he’s a parakeet. Which, if the judges turned around and saw a parakeet and decided to vote him into the competition, they would un-decide as soon as they found out his name is Phlegm. Not very marketable.’
Sylvia wondered if she was the only person who could see the water creeping in under the classroom door - if she was going mad, the kind of mad that makes you see and hear things that other people don’t see and hear, which she often wondered when she noticed odd and peculiar things happening.
Ms. Alabanza continued, ‘a natural disaster is a major event of natural causes, usually resulting in difficulty or obstruction for the people and communities nearby. Has anyone here lived through a natural disaster?’
Brian Phelps piped up: ‘my mum went through menopause last year?’ A wave of chuckles washed over the classroom. ‘Although it fits the criteria, I don’t think it counts, Brian.’ Ms. Alabanza smiled. Sylvia cast a quick glance over at Brian. Poor guy - Sylvia was very good at noticing things, see, and she’d noticed last year that Brian, who many in the class might refer to as the class clown due to his witty and blunt responses to Ms. Alabanza’s teaching, was actually a very literal boy. He warped figures of speech to his own understanding, walking straight though sarcasm like mist, and answered the questions that were asked of him, like a faulty metal detector, he beeped not at rhetoricals. Indeed, Brian’s face was open, trusting, and innocent, and a smile began to show for he’d realised that he’s interpreted a ‘natural disaster’ in his own, very ‘Brian’ way, and the rest of the class had interpreted Brian’s very ‘Brian’ response in a very ‘everyone else’ way.
Ms. Alabanza continued: ‘think bigger. Huge. The biggest you can imagine.’
‘A tornado,’ declared Lindsay. ‘Yes!’ declared Ms. Alabanza. And then the water reached her toes. Ms. Alabanza had been planning to take the afternoon’s classes outside on this lovely sunny day, but upon feeling her shoes saturate with salty water, a smile grew upon her face. What’s better than a class in the sun? Why, an aquatic class in the sun, of course.

The primary effects of flooding include loss of life and damage to structures, including bridges, sewage systems, roadways, and canals. Floods also frequently damage power transmission and sometimes power generation, which then has knock-on effects caused by loss of power.

If you are under a flood warning, the best advice to follow is to find safe shelter right away.
Turn around, don’t drown!
Stay off bridges over fast-moving water.
Determine how best to protect yourself based on the type of flooding. Evacuate if told to do so.
Anything that’s not bolted down will float away.