bws, I have been trying to think this through, more so lately in trying to alleviate some of my son's extreme anxiety over heavy rains, storms, and rising water. I'm glad I posed my question here as it is obvious I have many more things to think about and do.

The utilities that feed our home include gas for heating, cooking and hot water; electric for everything else; and water. Our septic is an aerator system, they would not allow us to put a septic tank/leach bed on the property due to the proximity to the river. The breaker box is in the garage, elevated on the wall. The garage floor is much lower than the rest of the house. There are flood vents, as required, to allow flood waters to come in the garage and exit into the crawl space, where there are two more flood vents to allow water to flow through instead of building up catastrophic pressure. Now while there has not been water in the garage due to flooding (had an incident recently with a faulty emergency release valve tho), would it be wise to get out there and shut off the main power switch BEFORE the water got high enough to even enter the garage through the flood vents? The water would have to come up quite a lot before it even reached any outlets or other wiring, but I'm thinking this might be the safest way to go if it ever did. The water heater was also placed in the garage, for ease of maintenance and replacement, however this is another possible weak spot as the water heater was placed on the garage floor. However there IS a shut off valve right on the line feeding it, I'm thinking turning off that valve, and unhooking the line leading from it to the hot water heater would be a good idea. I don't think there is much chance the water could get up enough to reach the heating/cooling system, but if it did there is a shut off there too if needed (it's an outside unit, but has been slightly elevated). The water main is in the front of the house beside the road, it would be a truly catastrophic flood event of Noah proportions to compromise that. As for the septic, it is in a lower part of the back yard, although not the lowest by any means. I do need to look into a back flow preventer like les suggested.

Cellphone service is spotty at home, but i can get a signal in the right spot. I need to get a good solar power system that could serve to recharge said phone, as well as any other devices.

The waiting game isn't so bad, as I said, usually it's only a matter of hours. We are not as trapped as it may sound, we do have some room to maneuver. Low spots in the road, where water may get up and over, are about half a mile to a mile in either direction, and that really doesn't happen very often.