Flooding both damaged commnuity ties and strengthened them

Pickett describes the Wilmington church group that came to Wallace to offer spiritual and material aid. He expresses his patriotic pride in the United States and the generosity of the United States government, which gave him the temporary trailer he is still living in two months after the disaster. Pickett believes the flood very quickly damaged people's capacity to help one another and simultaneously drew them together—and that the government withheld needed aid and provided it. These contradictions illustrate the complex emotional response to disaster.