Weekly Wrap Up - Flooded

Well, this has been a week we weren't expecting.  Saturday night around 10pm we had a severe storm move into our area and stall out directly over our town.  We received about 7 inches of rain in a 90 minute time period.  Our downtown area was devastated with 5 foot of flood water sweeping through, trapping people in cars, restaurants and destroying homes and businesses.  Our basement flooded too, with several inches of red muddy water coming in and ruining the carpet, furniture and other items in our family room.  Tom and I worked late into the night pushing water, moving items and saving what we could.

Here's a look at our downtown area during the flood, and the next day.

Sunday morning I took Olivia to the farm, and by 7am we were back home ready to tackle our basement.  Tom and I started ripping up carpet, while Olivia carried all the muddy wet carpet out to the curb.  Lindsey was our communications person and called in family for backup, scheduled folks from church to bring mops and worked out lunch plans with my friend Yvette.  Most people had no idea they were communicating with her all morning on my phone and FB, she just kept things rolling along.  As supplies and workers arrived she directed traffic and made sure things were taken care of.  We had most of the big items out and done before Olivia had to go back to work at 12:30. By the time we got back home at 2pm the extended family had finished up and left.   We're usually the show up and make things happen group, it was humbling to be on the opposite end of that for a change.  Very grateful for our tribe.

Monday morning I made calls to the insurance company and took care of other details.  The gas hot water heater had taken on water and I couldn't get it restarted, so we had to have someone come look at that.  Luckily they were able to get it dried and working without having to replace any parts.  After I dropped Olivia off at work, Lindsey and I began mopping the floors with bleach and relocating fans to help with the drying out.  By the end of the day we were no longer mopping up red mud, and had managed to get to the point where you couldn't smell mud anymore...but gosh that bleach smell is potent.

Tuesday after I dropped Olivia off at work I was able to get caught up on laundry and give my poor back a little rest.  (Did I mention I fell down the steps on Saturday night during the flooding?? sigh).  I picked up some industrial grade anti-mold/mildew spray...but then saw that we're under floor warning again starting tomorrow, so I decided not to use it just yet...so we mopped with bleach yet again.   The kids had BJJ in the evening.  We went under flood watch again for tomorrow through 11pm, with more heavy rains expected the rest of the week.

Wednesday I dropped Olivia off and then Lindsey and I went to help God's Pit Crew unload a tractor trailer full of flood relief supplies.  We spent the morning delivering items (bleach, water, Gatorade, blessing buckets and snacks) to various locations in town.  Once that was completed we moved over to the sandbag filling station that our city set up to help residents and business owners try to protect their property the rest of the week.  We helped bag sand and helped some of the older folks carry their bags to their vehicles.  I was able to get 10 big bags to bring home to fortify our place...but I probably needed much more.  Not having a truck is a detriment at times.  

We went under FLOOD WARNING around 8:20pm.  We had several inches of rain fall again, and our downtown area began flooding pretty early, with water rescues happening early on.   Thankfully, the sand bags and preparations I'd spent time on paid off and we didn't get a single drop of water in the basement.

Thursday was hectic, and also under flood watch.   The city brought in another 27 tons of sand and residents bagged over 40,000 bags of sand. Olivia will be farm sitting starting this weekend, so I ran her out to the farm before 7am so she could run through the morning chores and feeding routines with all the livestock.  She had to be at work at 10:30am, then the insurance adjuster came to look at our basement at 11am.  With that appointment done I ran out to pick up a few items from the store.   The store wasn't taking any cash at all, supposedly because they couldn't get the room with the safe in it unlocked, so none of the checkout lanes had any cash in their drawers.   Laundry, housework and mopping the basement were on task for the afternoon.  At 4pm, we had the closing on our house refinance.   The closer came directly to our house and the whole thing took less than 30 minute! We cut our interest rate in half, lowered our monthly payment, dropped 3 years off of the life of our loan and saved $54,000 in interest.  Olivia got off at 5:30 and then everyone was off to BJJ at 6:15pm.  

Friday morning...yeah, more rain falling.   Olivia has her last day of work at the YMCA, she is so  completely done with this job.  I'm proud of her for sticking it out, she learned a lot about what kind of supervisor NOT to be if she's ever in that position, and how to grit your teeth and keep pushing ahead in an uncomfortable position.   

I'd ordered a t-shirt quilt for Olivia's graduation gift.  Within a couple of weeks of dropping it all off, the seamstress had a string of sudden health issues that took her from vibrant and active to being deceased in short order.  Her husband returned the untouched box of shirts this past week, so today's task is to drop those off at the new seamstress and hope we can get it back in a few weeks.   Olivia gets off at 5:30pm and I have a meeting scheduled here at the house at 7pm.  I'm thinking it'll be a pizza kind of night.  

Have a good weekend!