The Amnesia of the Desert: Arizona Flood & Readiness

I’ve lived in rural Arizona for forty years. When I watch the news cycles and scroll through social media posts about the recent October and November storms, I have to laugh. I don't laugh out of malice, but because of how profoundly out of sync our modern lives have become with nature and the seasons.

We build cities in the mountains, pave over parking lots, cut roads through canyons, and drop subdivisions right into those same canyons. And then, the rains come. They come hard, and Mother Nature teaches us a lesson we keep forgetting: she is the most powerful force on earth. As humans, we like to think we are at the top of the food chain, but Mother Nature remains the ultimate ruler of this planet.

I laugh because our current government and planning entities have completely flipped the script on how, when, and where buildings should be placed. We’ve been in a twenty-year drought, and it has given us a dangerous case of historical amnesia. We are actively ignoring the 100-year floodplains. People want their slice of the pie, driven by a fear of missing out, so they build exactly where the water runs. Then the water runs, and they cry foul.

Growing up in Greenlee County, I remember being asked to babysit the local kids while the parents went down to the river to hang out, socialize, and watch the water crest above the bridge. Yes, the courthouse, businesses, and houses were frequently violated by the sheer force of the rain. It happened so often that the state eventually spent a massive sum of money to build a giant floodgate across the highway and train tracks to divert the water away from low-lying areas. That very gate was closed early on the morning of November 2nd because the rain simply wasn’t stopping. I grew up knowing this was a part of life. It wasn't a spectacle back then. It just was.

The day I realized I needed to live a prepared life didn’t happen because I fell for some internet doomsday theory. It happened because I live and work in rural Arizona, specifically at a hospital that lost its main power grid for hours.The hospital had a backup generator. All the patients were completely safe, and every single built-in redundancy worked exactly as designed. But the real chaos came from the person who was supposed to be in charge—the one who was supposed to be calm. He came screaming into my unit, furious because I hadn’t personally called maintenance to check on the generator.

Meanwhile, the generator was already humming, the backups were running, and I had patients to tend to. I didn’t have time to run around causing a panic. I trusted the system that had been built, and it worked. One storm was all it took to wipe out power to a rural town for fourteen hours. These aren’t the massive grid failures of Texas, Louisiana, or the Carolinas, but it was a first for us. It painted a picture most people today have never seen, or have actively chosen to forget.

I saw chaos that day, but it wasn't caused by the storm. It was caused by a leader who obviously didn’t trust his own system. Was I wrong for trusting the system, or was he wrong for doubting it? That is a question I still ask myself when I reflect on that day.

But that system worked because someone planned for it. Most of our homes don’t have a backup generator or a maintenance crew. What I learned is that our modern world isn’t built in a sustainable way. We pretend we are in control, but we never really are. 

We stress over corporate jobs that would replace us tomorrow without an afterthought. We force ourselves to be more, be bigger, and achieve what those before us didn’t. We live in an era some call the "Great Acceleration." Technology is moving faster than most can keep up with. AI is rewriting the face of social media, making it harder than ever to decipher what is real and what is fake.

Like a car, a truck, or a smartphone, technology offers amazing advancements. It can make life easier and improve longevity. But in the wrong hands, it can lead to total destruction. The programming itself isn't inherently evil, but in the hands of man, anything can be weaponized. To steal an internet meme: "If Scooby-Doo and the gang taught us anything, it’s that the monster is always a human."

So I have to ask: Is this how we want to live? Is this the world we want to leave behind? I certainly don't, and I know there are a lot of people out there who feel exactly the same way.

Those are the people I am calling out to. Not because I’m trying to build a secret society or start some backwoods anti-government movement, but because we need a portion of the population that is ready and willing to teach when technology and human greed finally overwhelm our fragile infrastructure. This isn’t the rambling of an "end-of-times, crazy prepper lady." This is simply planning for the day the storm comes. Because as a nurse, I understand exactly how delicate human systems are—from the power lines and running water right down to our physical health.

How do we prepare? Where do we even begin?

When I first decided that I wanted a life rooted in readiness, I didn’t know where to look. So, I just started with food. My first step was looking inside my own pantry. I took an inventory. Was it organized? What did we actually have?

Back then, we didn’t have much. I didn’t preserve food in any meaningful way. I gardened, but nowhere near the scale I eventually discovered we would need, or the scale I’ve managed to achieve twenty years later under the scorching Arizona sun. I’ve lived and I’ve learned. Some attempts were valuable failures, while others were stunning successes. I’ve wasted money I wish I had back, and I’ve spent money on items that paid for themselves in no time at all.

I can’t tell you exactly where your personal journey should begin, other than to start by taking inventory. The rest is just a series of small steps that you can take in whatever order makes sense for your life. In this guide, I’m starting with the foundational elements I learned to value. Every piece of the puzzle is important, but your unique life, your location, and your family will dictate which areas you need to focus on first.

If you want to find out where I started, how it went, and how to avoid the expensive mistakes I have made, make sure and follow along. As we prepare this guide, continue the blog, and move forward living a fuller, healthier, quieter life.