Let me tell you about my best friend Hank.

Hank Kendal and I grew up in the same neighbourhood. I don't recall exactly how we first met in kindergarten. We weren't in the same class. In fact, we were never put in the same class all through school, but somehow we connected on our way to or from school. Or maybe in the school yard. That detail isn't important.

Hank and I are inseparable. We're like brothers. We're like an old married couple. We finish each other's sentences and bicker. He's like me, being the youngest child with two much older sisters.

As kids, we tented in each other's back yards and we still go on family vacations together. When we were eight, his father got rid of the rusty old swing set in his backyard and put in a pool. We spent most of our daylight hours in that pool that summer; and the ones that followed.

We're totally inseparable.

Hank is insanely creative. Making up songs and stories. He immediately tore apart store-bought toys and mixed and mashed them back together like some kind of Dr. Frankenstein. Creating way cooler action figures than the toy makers could dream up. He’s in University now working on a degree in Urban Planning.

Hank’s family are his father who’s a big wig at a steel mill and his stay at home mom who dotes on him as well as his two elder sisters, who are five and eight years older than Hank.

When the earthquakes hit and the world turned upside down all of the telecommunications failed and there was pandemonium in the streets. Our parents packed all ten of us up and burned rubber to get us all out of the city to take refuge at my parents hobby farm.

We were a pair of eleven year old kids who both turned twelve during our time there. We were sheltered and didn't really have a clue as to what was going on.

It was January 2004 and the farm was buried in snow, but there was a huge thaw. Spring came unnaturally early that year. It rained and stormed continuously. Often mixed with ice or hail. It was miserable.

It let up briefly at the end of March and then, on April 2nd, the storm of the Apocalypse came down even harder and dumped so much rain we almost all died in the flooding.

Hank and I got separated from the rest of our families and spent two days clinging to each other like a pair of shipwrecked sailors. We were huddled together on the roof of the barn as the flood waters rushed around us. The rest of our families were in the same predicament less than a hundred meters away on the roof of the house with no way of reaching each other until the waters receded.

When the waters did recede, exhausted and desperate to get back together with our families, Hank and I scrambled to the edge of the Barn roof as our fathers came with a ladder. I was too eager to get down and I missed the top rung of the ladder and fell off of the roof. I landed hard and I was knocked out cold. I woke up later with a broken arm and a concussion. Hank made it down unharmed.

In May, we finally got word that it was safe to return home to the city. Remarkably, our city homes were relatively undamaged except for the basements. The flooding hadn’t been as severe in our neighbourhood but Dad’s model railway empire was completely destroyed.