Robert Santos: alarmist. I'm not sure if this is a direct quote or not, but I think it's pretty close: "We're all going to DIE! We're all going to DIE! Run for your lives! Save yourselves!"
San Diego today was pummeled by a Pacific storm that dropped up to .03” of rain on some areas of the county. The terrible storm is being blamed for countless automobile accidents and incidents of foot slippage along the city’s sidewalks. Geologists have been seen holding their breath, though not waiting for a landslide to occur. The San Diego River rose a full .25” closer to flood stage, alarming city emergency planners.
Surfers, scuba divers, and other water revelers were encouraged to stay out of the water, as runoff-caused pollution raised e. coli levels past acceptable limits. Many residents were unsure of what to do. “I’m unsure of what to do,” said Nancy Hardwick, 44, of Poway. “Should I run screaming from my home, or should I hunker down in the bathtub and wait for the worst to pass me by? Nobody will tell me! Please, dear God, send out a city official to tell me what to do!”
Ms. Hardwick’s state of anxiety was echoed elsewhere around San Diego. “We just don’t know what to do with this kind of rainfall,” commented Jason Elgars, 59, of Santee. “We can’t go outside, we can’t just sit around inside, and we sure as hell can’t drive in it. Why, I tried driving in it the last time it rained like this – I think it was about a year ago – and all that happened was I ended up spinning out in my own driveway. Talk about embarrassing. At least it was until I saw that all my neighbors had done the same thing, then I didn’t feel so badly.”
The rain is being blamed for a deadly Amtrak collision today in Los Angeles, where the rain forced a panicked man to stop his Jeep Cherokee on the tracks, leading to the collision. “I didn’t know what to do,” said the man, who asked not to be identified, “but I can tell you this, stopping on the tracks was really my only option. I mean, what is this stuff falling from the sky? Is it little pieces of Heaven? What is it?!?” He broke down in tears and had to be carried off on a gurney.
For the past few days leading up to this horrific weather event, weathermen around San Diego have been alarming the public with news of impending doom. Weatherman Robert Santos, of the San Diego WB News at Ten, claimed that this storm “[would] be the worst thing to happen to anyone, anywhere, at any point in history, and I don’t think I’m overstating the matter to put it like that.” Weatherchick Aloha Taylor (yes, that is her real name) simply yelled, “Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!!!!” as she stood in front of a green-screen laced with scary thunderclouds and lightning bolts.
The animals at the county's three major theme parks seemed unaffected by the torrential rain. Here, the San Diego Zoo pandas make a quiet, lazy day of it.
The animals of the county’s three theme parks (Legoland just doesn’t count) seemed unfazed by the downpour. At the San Diego Zoo, the pandas were seen to perhaps, just maybe, cuddle a little closer, but this could not be confirmed by Glossy News Animal Investigative Services (GNAIS). The animals at the Wild Animal Park were undaunted, and the animals at Sea World were most certainly unaffected by the torrent of rain.
Long time Coronado resident Gus Fremont, 65, said, “Oh, this is nothing. Why, I remember back in ’89… or was it ’79, hell I can’t remember, but back in one o’ them years way back, we got darn near half an inch of rain in one day! I know you think I’m makin’ that up, but you can just go down to the library and look it up for yourself. Babies was crying, the womenfolk was screamin’, it was terrible.”
This dreadful storm has proven one thing about San Diego in particular and Southern California in general – residents do not know how to drive when water is falling out of the sky. I know it’s rain, but really, people, must we be crashing our cars like that? For the residents of San Diego, life will go on, but at what price?
