I’d never seen floods of this epic proportion except on television during the floods of 1993. The thing that surprised me most is how people go about their daily lives as rising water heads their way. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, which is also a river town, but the Cumberland River is not quite as mighty as the Mississippi.

When something like this happens in your community there can be a tendency to panic. When I arrived on the scene there was a flurry of activity. It can be hard to know where to start. The first day the story was obvious — cover the National Guard and their efforts to help the community. Many of the guardsmen and women I spoke with had already completed tours of duty in Iraq; they were now just happy to do something good in their own backyard.

The second day I did a story about kids as helpers in Winfield. This was done mainly because most of the media was shut out of the Pin Oak levee situation. In the middle of my second sandbagging video attempt it hit me — focus on the children volunteers. I thought to myself, “These are going to be hard interviews.” Many days it is hard to pull a good interview from an adult. But I plugged away at it, all the while not knowing what I was going to get or how I would pull it all together. Once I began the editing process, it became clear to me that I had more footage than I could use. I think that staying calm and not allowing myself to be overwhelmed was what saved me in that situation.