When Cornelius and Shauna Frantz of Pittsburgh came to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2013, they expected to work with people who had experienced trauma during the country’s 1990s civil war. They didn’t expect a new traumatic event would help unite people across longtime ethnic and religious divides.

2014 started with a mild winter and early spring. Precipitation that would have fallen during a typical winter came all at once in May, bringing three months’ worth of rain in just three days.