Four were bot accounts.
One was me screenshotting.
The second storm hit on a Wednesday night in late October.
Four-point-seven inches in eight hours.
Not a hurricane.
Not even tropical.
Just a long, steady, soaking rain that would have been completely unremarkable in any other year.
But this wasn't any other year.
This was the year Brenda Whitfield had buried the only drainage channel the neighborhood had.
The damage was not slightly worse than the first time.
It was catastrophic.
Twenty-two homes flooded.
Water rose three inches inside the ground-floor rooms of seven houses along Magnolia Court.
The retaining wall that had started leaning in September collapsed entirely, sending a wave of mud and gravel across one family's patio and into their sunroom.
Three driveways buckled from subsurface water pressure.
Willow Creek Boulevard, a street name that now carried a sickening irony, turned into a shallow brown river running curb to curb for six straight hours.
And the insurance companies said no.
Not "we'll review it."
Not "let us send an adjuster."
Flat no.
Claim after claim came back with identical language.
"Damage resulting from man-made alteration of natural drainage infrastructure is excluded from standard homeowners flood provisions."
In plain English, someone deliberately destroyed the system that kept your property dry, and your policy does not cover that.
Twenty-two families.
$340,000 in combined damage.
Not a cent from their insurers.
Brenda's house, of course, sat on the highest lot in the subdivision.
The water never came close.
Not a puddle on her manicured lawn.
Not a drop on her sealed driveway.
She posted from her back deck that evening.
A photo of herself in a cream cashmere sweater holding a glass of red wine, with the rain-soaked subdivision glowing behind her in golden-hour light.
The caption:
"Praying for our neighbors during this difficult time. We're all in this together. #WillowCreekFamily."
She was not, in any measurable sense, in it with anyone.
The anger turned real.
Not the polite muttering kind that lives in HOA comment threads and dies in forwarded emails.
The kind where people show up at your door with mud still on their shoes and demand to know who authorized the project that destroyed their home.
A petition circulated within 48 hours.
Eighty-seven homeowners signed it.
Nearly 30% of the membership.
Invoking the CC&R clause that permitted a special meeting upon a 20% petition.
They had it in two days flat.
Two things happened that same week that cracked the case wide open.
First, Eddie Watts, one of Dale's former equipment operators, the man who had driven the bulldozer that filled the creek, walked into the county building department and told an inspector everything.
Dale had instructed the crew:
"Don't worry about permits. It's HOA approved. Just get it done before the owners get back."
Eddie had kept his copy of the work order.
It was signed by Dale and annotated:
"Per B. Whitfield authorization. Community aesthetic renewal project."
Eddie didn't go to the county out of conscience.
He went because Dale still owed him $4,000 for the job.
Second, Carol Jennings drove to my house on a quiet Sunday morning and handed me a folded printout.
It was an email from Brenda to Dale sent the day before the creek was filled.