The Premier of Manitoba, Greg Selinger, makes the decision to break the dike near Portage la Prairie and deliberately flood 85 square miles and inundate 150 homes…to prevent an uncontrolled break in the dike that would flood 850 properties occupying 190 square miles along the Assiniboine River. He says it is one of the most difficult decisions he has ever had to make.
The very same day, over a thousand miles to the south, Army Corps of Engineers Major General Michael Walsh calls a similar shot. At his word, a 10-ton floodgate, part of the Morganza spillway lock & levee system, is opened, easing water pressure in the Mississippi River that threatens Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This is a much bigger deluge–covering 3,000 square miles and affecting 30,000 residents, including the towns of Morgan City and Houma.
It reminds me a bit of that dramatic incident in William Styron’s novel, Sophie’s Choice. A sadistic nazi forces a mother arriving at the Auschwitz train depot with her two children to choose one of them to be gassed immediately while the other can proceed with her into the camp.
Sophie’s decision is an impossible dilemma because there is not so much as a trace of lesser destruction resulting from one choice vs. the other. Either course of action is equally horrendous and unspeakable. At least with the flood situations there is an optimal choice (of course, not the one that the people being deliberately inundated would choose).
Sophie, Selinger, and Walsh’s situations did, however, have a couple of elements in common: the choice has to be made and it has to be made by them. Also, no matter how you choose, real, innocent people will be impacted.
I cringed watching Meryl Streep make her fateful selection in the movie. And no way would I want to have been in Greg Selinger’s or Michael Walsh’s shoes as they wrestled with their options and arrived at their ultimate decision.
This is the guts of leadership in action. I salute both these men.