There was a heartbreaking story from Kansas back in the fall of 2003. During flooding there, a wall of water washed across the Kansas turnpike, overwhelming a family of six in a minivan. In an attempt to save his family, the father, Robert Rogers, kicked out a window, but was immediately sucked out into the torrent. In the end, he was the only member of his family to survive. His wife and their four children, ages one, three, five, and eight, all drowned, the three youngest still strapped into their car seats. The oldest child along with her mother, were also swept out of the car but drowned in the raging waters.

Regrettably, stories of families perishing in floods, house fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disasters are not that unusual, but in this particular case, the surviving fat…