My husband and I once lived in a city surrounded by beautiful volcanoes, where heavy tropical rains running down their slopes often created treacherous flash floods. 

One night, as we were driving in one such storm, we noticed that other drivers were pulling off the road. We commented on it but didn’t follow their wise example. When the two cars ahead of us stopped in the middle of the road, my husband impatiently pulled ahead of them—and unwittingly drove straight into a flooded area. We’d traveled only a few feet when the engine died. As we sat there, I became angry with him over his decision to ignore the fact that other drivers were pulling over. My anger quickly turned to fear, though, when we realized that our car was now being lifted by the floodwaters and starting to float.

The storm had knocked out the electricity in that neighborhood, and it was pitch dark. We didn’t know exactly where we were, but we knew that the road, which the raging waters had now made invisible, bordered a ravine with no guardrails. We also knew that we were in a part of the city that was considered unsafe due to a high rate of violent crime.