Hydro Phobia

Fiorella does not trust water.  It's okay in small quantities--bath tubs or swimming pools or poured into drinking glasses, but large uncontrolled amounts of it--oceans, lakes, rivers--make her nervous.

She is astounded at the people on HGTV who want to live on the ocean shore--haven't they ever heard of hurricanes and tsunamis? And lakes often  hide tree branches one can get snared in, or dangerous microbes, or piranhas, or crocodiles. And rivers can flood at a moment's notice.

Perhaps that's the root of Fiorella's phobia.  When she was a child and her family was driving from Texas to Ohio one year, they crested the hill at Cairo and looked down to see the road in front of them diving down beneath the Wabash River.

There was no land in sight on the other side