The morning started out with the ominous sound of rumbling thunder. You know, the kind that you can hear starting to roll and eventually your house rattles in that way where everything shakes. I was snuggled up in bed, but when the thunder sounded, I opened my eyes to an eerie greenish-yellow light in the room.....and then, the rain. Some sixth sense must have told me to get up and check the basement....when I got down there, there was a lovely - and growing - puddle of water. Shortly thereafter, the rain stopped and I spent a couple of hours cleaning up downstairs. Once I got everything dry, I went up for a shower.
About two hours later, the skies opened up. I think we got around 4 inches of rain in 45 minutes. There was no road in front of my house. The water was rushing down the street and stretched from my neighbor's garage (the one across the street) almost to my front door. Between my house and my next-door neighbor's house (where we played volleyball) there was a river. I was terrified that the water was going to start seeping into my living room from either the front door or the side of the house! The ground was so saturated from the earlier rain that water was gushing through the concrete block in the basement....and then the wash basin started backing up. In all, we probably had about 3 & 1/2 inches of water in the basement....in ALL of the basement.
We were the lucky ones. I had been home and was able to rush stuff out of the basement to the kids who were waiting on the basement steps to lug things upstairs. My next door neighbor had about 4 feet of water in her basement - she lost her hot water tank, washer & dryer and a freezer. My other neighbors were on vacation and the fire department had to break into their house to turn off the gas. They had a couple of feet of water. For the next couple of weeks, our neighborhood looked like a refugee camp. Everybody was lugging stuff out of their houses to either dry out, or put out for the garbage men - who, I'm sure, were cussing our street out that next Monday!
Anyway, I'm glad we've made it through this year without a repeat of THAT! I don't enjoy thunderstorms anymore, and I think that's sad. Camron is completely freaked out anytime it rains with any force or he hears thunder. He's quite adept at getting on the computer and checking the Weather Channel radar. Maybe he'll be a weatherman when he grows up????
5 comments:
As each year passes, it should ease the memory a bit and give your family a little peace that it's not happened again. ((hugs))
Holy cow! I'm glad you didn't have catastrophic damage, but what a mess. Keep your fingers crossed through the rest of this rainy, rainy summer.
Wow, no wonder you don't like storms. I wouldn't either. Your sweet boys were so awesome to help lug stuff up out of the basement. You have a sweet, sweet family. :)
Yeah, they helped lug stuff up, but for the next 3 and 1/2 days while Big S and I busted our butts scrubbing and drying and dragging, etc., etc., etc., they played video/computer games and watched tv!!!
I'll never forget, it was late Saturday afternoon - so we'd been cleaning pretty much nonstop for 2 and 1/2 days - and I was sitting on the bench on the front porch taking a break. My neighbor across the street hadn't had any damage, but there was a lot of junk in his yard that had washed downstream (like about 5 bridges, wood chunks and sticks). Anyway, a dog house somehow ended up in his front yard and he picked it up and started screaming, "Fluffy!!! Fluffy!!! Has anyone seen my dog???? FLUFFYYYYYY!!!" At this point I was so exhausted that I laughed until I cried. It was great stress relief.
Awww, Tami- I remember this is how we "met" on HSR- I think you posted about flooding. I am about 45 mins away from you, and we were a mess too! I'm just glad we were all OK. I lost a lot of books- my "paper babies."
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