With some anticipation I'd planned on making May 4th a special day. I wanted to make my bride's birthday a little special ... something I'd not excelled at in the past. I had a nice gift in mind and maybe a romantic dinner later in the day. But ....
The phone first rang at 4:03am. The phone never rings that early with good news I later thought. It actually rang 3 more times before I was able to figure out what that noise was. The air conditioning was running and the slightly muffled sound apparently didn't make much of an impression on my subconscious. Sharon caught on to what the noise was and finally got my attention. I ambled to the other end of the coach and grabbed my cell phone. Yup ... 4 messages had been missed. I hit the playback button and listened to the lady at the other end of the message. Cobwebs were still swinging inside my head so I played another message and it was the same lady.
At that point the light bulb went off in my head and I realized it was my automated alarm system calling me to tell me I had a problem. I listened one more time and finally realized that I probably had a problem back home. Back home meant a three hour drive to the other side of the state to see what was going on. The alarm code indicated that I had a flooding problem. Oh crap!
We are beginning to wonder if the house is trying to tell us something. Maybe like.. 'don't leave me for the winter or I'll allow bad things to happen'. We've had broken water lines and a destructive clan of raccoons in earlier years so we were hoping maybe we'd been dealt enough grief, but apparently not.
I called my son who lives nearby but, as luck would have it, he had disconnected his answering service earlier that evening because of a number of crank calls so I couldn't reach him. So I next called my daughter who lives some 15 miles away for help. She was a little groggy when she answered but quickly agreed to go over to the house to see what was up. We packed a few articles of clothing then headed east from South Haven. Three hours of wondering what lay ahead.
My daughter finally reached the house in about an hour and gave us a status report over the phone. The news was not so good. The little town we live in had about 5.5 inches of rain over the course of about 6 hours. And the little town we live in had an electrical power outage shortly after the deluge started. This was not adding up well for us. She said the entire basement was flooded a little bit. Not feet of water but enough to completely saturate all the new carpeting and pad plus soak into all the bottom edges of the paneling. She assessed the situation and determined that her immediate job was to save as much of our collection of old family photographs as she could, as any of the furniture was too heavy for her to move. The power eventually returned sometime in the middle of the night but by then the water had fully saturated the ground surrounding our house and the brand-new heavy duty sump just couldn't pump it out of the sump pit as fast as it was pouring in.
'Some of the worst flooding in our area in decades' the news reporter was saying on the radio. As we got closer to home we discovered that both major interstates were closed due to flooding so we had to take a back-road approach to get the the house. We hoped we could find a way. As it turned out, our route passed right past our insurance man's office so I gave him a preemptive call and he said stop in. It didn't take too long to get the bad news. Even though the electrical failure caused the pump not to run, thus causing the flooding, this was still considered a storm sewer back up issue and we did not have coverage. I never had purchased this rider over the past 35 years because we never had an issue like this but this was just one of those special weather events that caught us, and many others off guard. I left his office in despair and headed home to see the damage. Once inside we immediately discovered that my daughter had gathered and spread out out all the wet photographs to help them dry out. It's interesting that we seem to have a greater appreciation of those mementos of our past than what was damaged in the basement. I hope anyone reading this takes note and finds a way to protect their precious memories. Sealed plastic boxes work best. Plastic bags will all leak (as we found out) over time so get them off the floor into protective boxes.
As I went downstairs it was certainly bad but not catastrophic. The emergency cleanup squad came over later in the day and removed all the wet carpet and pad and brought in air handling fans to dry the place out. There were about 8 of the fans and giant dehumidifiers running when the workers left and they said they'd return in about four days to see how things were progressing. I can only imagine what the electrical bill will be for this month.
So another little one of life's speed bumps on this day. Certainly not as bad as some families had to endure around the area but bad enough. Nothing we can't overcome but it's just damn bad it had to happen on my bride's birthday. She was a real trooper about it all but she deserves better a better birthday. I've got my work cut out for me.
Regardless ... we're still livin' the dream. But just a little soggy at the moment.
Phil
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