Imagine waking up to the sound of water gushing through your house. You leap from your bed and your feet plunge into a river of water that has overtaken your home along with others in your neighborhood. 

That was the reality for Ensley resident Douglass D. Rice, Sr. and his family in 1995 as Hurricane Opal ushered in a deluge of water from nearby Village Creek. Most of that low-lying part of Ensley would eventually be bought out with dollars from a cooperative effort between the City of Birmingham and federal agencies following decades of mass flooding and residents like Rice repeatedly having to evacuate their homes, lose all of their worldly possessions, and rebuild their homes and lives.