The Border File Again [SIGH]

It seems almost like an eternity. That is the time that I have put off writing for my Blogsite because of the horrific tragedy that we had in Tecumseh as a result of the giant rainstorm and the flooding of homes that we had here just a little while ago.

I have to admit as I have said before that this tragedy that happened to me and my wife was the first time that this has happened to us ever in the past. It meant that everything just stopped. It had to. To be realistic, I could not do anything else until all of the problems in the house caused by the flooding were solved. Not only completely but properly as well. Thank heavens though, through the actions of people acting for us--both our family and friend and representatives of the insurance company--that this was accomplished properly and very quickly as well.  We are pretty much back now to where we were before almost without realizing that anything bad had happened to us. How fortunate that has been.

I really did not write anything significant on my Blogsite for quite a period of time, other than stories about the storm itself, because of the mess under which my family was living.  That was just the reality. However, now that normalcy is coming back, I have taken it upon myself to go back to writing articles on my Blogsite again. This function really is that important to me because it makes me do some work to keep my mind operating. 

It was my intention to make this article go back and check out some of the interesting stories that had taken place over the last few weeks and then to write about them. I still hope that is going to get done soon. However, I decided that I would write about this story because it was so bizarre to me:

"Behind the Bridge: Clock ticking on the new Windsor-Detroit crossing

Anne Jarvis, Windsor Star October 28, 2016"

It was a very long story that she wrote, very detailed as well. It just went on and on and on and on. I must admit that I only saw it online and on the pages of the Internet Windsor Star. I just assumed that it could be a good part of a complete page in the normal Star on the Friday when it was published.  It was just such a huge story that she wrote.  Unfortunately, I don't know where it was published in the newspaper and how much space it took up. Oh well, that was just a mere journalistic issue I was looking at discovering.

I read it. The whole story by Anne. I read it again just before I published this story so that I could remember it. It was a very well-written article with lots of information. Primarily about the past. Unfortunately, it really did not tell us very much about the future. All it did do was make it clear that everything was still in the middle of a mess as far as new construction went in our area. It made it clear that the starting of the construction of the Government bridge hasn't really happened yet and who knows when it may get started or even if it ever gets started.

To be frank about it, I really have no intention of going through her article in detail and commenting on it all. Why bother since it is really historical in some aspects and in others just setting out what the issues are that have to be dealt with now. Unfortunately for her, she is in no position to say exactly what should be expected because frankly nobody knows.

It is not just a mess in the Windsor area as far as border crossings. It is just as bad in the Niagara area. What is even more interesting is that no one is suggesting that a new bridge be built as was proposed at one time in the past. Here is the latest verbiage there about some difficulties that they are having and what they are proposing to solve them:

"Wait times at Canada’s second-busiest border crossing can stretch to hours, according to mayors and bridge authorities in Ontario’s Niagara Region who are pleading with Ottawa to boost staffing levels to ease the congestion, especially as the busy Peace Bridge prepares to reduce its operating lanes next month.

The Peace Bridge between Fort Erie, Ont., and Buffalo is one of three border crossings in the Niagara Region where wait times skyrocketed this summer. Some travellers waited for more than two hours to cross the Peace, Rainbow and Lewiston-Queenston Bridges while processing booths sat empty, bridge authorities said. The long wait times are a far cry from the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) service standard: 10 minutes from Monday to Thursday, and 20 minutes on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays.

“The fact is people can wait for hours – plural – in line to cross the bridge. These are people that are hungry, they have to go to the bathroom, they’ve got screaming kids and they just want to get in,” said Jim Diodati, mayor of Niagara Falls, Ont. “We need them [the federal government] to hire more border guards. That’s all there is to it...

Niagara-area mayors on both sides of the border asked the government to immediately address the situation by hiring more CBSA officers to work at the bridges.

“We implore you and the federal government to act immediately to allocate the necessary human resources to the international bridges along the Niagara River to ensure the safe and timely movement of people and goods across our border,” the letter read. “This is a situation that can no longer be ignored and one that our communities should no longer be expected to endure.” (Michelle Zilio, Globe and Mail, Oct. 26, 2016)

Isn't that rather interesting? No discussion about a new bridge being built there but just staffing up the existing bridge. Doesn't that suggest to you as well, dear reader, that the new bridge is not going to be built by the Government in our area considering this comment in the Jarvis article:

"the number of trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge dropped almost 30 per cent in the last decade, following the recession and the shift in manufacturing to the south"

Seriously, can anyone invest billions in a new Government bridge that might cost $4 billion to build and still compete against the Ambassador Bridge? Don't be silly.

So let's get back to reality and figure out what's going to happen. Forget about a new bridge to be built by the Government. If that process goes on, it will be in front of litigation in both Canada and the United States for at least a decade or more. Even then, I expect that the Ambassador Bridge Company will be the ultimate winner or else the Governments would have done something by now. They just have not.

Accordingly, there really is only one way that this matter can move forward in a realistic manner now and get all problems solved immediately. The Governments must partner with the Ambassador Bridge Company to resolve this matter. The Ambassador Bridge Company people must think of a new way in which to act with the Governments if they want this process to start advance now. I see two alternatives which I have discussed before:

1) the Governments give the Ambassador Bridge Company permission to build its new bridge now, on its own. It will now have a 2nd crossing across the river between Canada and United States to operate traffic, or

2) the Governments become partners of the Ambassador Bridge Company by receiving say, 10% of the shares of the Border Company by paying around $500 million or perhaps a bit more to cover the cost of building the new bridge and repairing the old one.

It would not surprise me, to be direct about it, to see the Governments buy the entire Ambassador Bridge Company many years down the road depending on whether the Moroun's son wishes to sell out all of his interests in it.  That would not surprise me if only his family still has the main ownership of the Bridge. Surely the Governments must think about that as a very serious consideration of what they should be doing.

That's all I want to say about the Jarvis article.  To be direct, what I set out makes the most sense to me and should get done already!

Winter Is Coming

Brrrr. It is starting to get cold outside these days. I have to admit that cold weather is not exactly my big favourite time of year and I know we are getting this kind of weather starting now for many months to come. I guess that we are going to lose out on the rather nice winter weather that we had last year when the weather seemed to be a lot better than what is being proposed for this year.

And yes, you, dear reader, are going to read about our big mess at least one more time. After all, I do need to get it out of my system by showing how well everything has been accomplished and that, in fact, we still have a good and calm future in our lives.

One huge advantage for my wife and me now is that the work that had to be done on our house after the big storm that we suffered here has pretty much been completed.  We were relatively fortunate in that we did not suffer any huge disasters as a result of the flooding waters that entered into our house. Oh we had a fair bit that covered the floor of our basement quite completely and for many hours. In one sense, we were quite lucky that the basement was not finished the way all the basements in all of our other homes that we owned before were completed. While we had some damage that was done, it was not a horrific job that had to be completed nor was it outrageously expensive to do so. Moreover, it could be accomplished relatively quickly which it was.

The outside contractors who had to do the work fixing up our place did so quite quickly. In addition, our insurance company paid the fees right away that allowed us to replace all of the parts that were damaged. We had no disagreements whatsoever as to what had to be done or what the costs were.

To be honest, I am quite pleased at what was accomplished so well. It meant that our house was brought back to "normal" in a relatively quick period of time. That made the life of my wife and myself so much easier and so much better. Moreover, we were able to go out and buy the replacement parts for our house that were destroyed pretty quickly. The items we found were at a very good price and we were able to get them delivered to our house and the parts were put in so easily. As an example, just the other day we received our new elliptical trainer that we put into our basement where our old one was located before (it was so much bigger than I thought it was even after Marsha and I had seen it in the Department store where we bought it). The fellow who put it all together did it so wonderfully in just over one hour. Heck, if I was doing that task, I expect it would have taken me days to do so if I could ever have done it properly in the first place!

I know that a lot of my neighbours are having work done in their premises probably because the damage there was much more extensive because many homes had a completely furnished basement. In fact, I heard that one place paid out many tens of thousands of dollars for putting in their basement when it was first built! Remarkably, I saw that wonderful premises about a week or so before the storm hit.  I was just shocked at what I heard happened there.  I saw all the pieces of the basements of so many homes that were taken outside after the storms hit. It just made me feel so tense about it all. Hopefully, with all the work being done around here everything will come back to "normal" as quickly as possible for everyone.

There lots of items that I want to write about in my Blogsite as soon as I can with my life coming back to normalcy I am hoping.  Obviously, one of the biggest subjects that I will be talking about are the articles in the Windsor Star on Friday dealing with the border file. I have to admit that I have no real understanding about why they were written in the first place since they did not accomplish very much at all as far as I am concerned. The total amount written by the various reporters was enormous.  Yet, I am not sure what the purpose of the articles was supposed to be. I do have an explanation for what is going on so you will have to come back shortly after I finished my article, dear reader, to read it.

I am sure that I will be writing eventually about the automobile industry once the relationship between the auto companies and the unions are all resolved. I am hoping that everything gets finished without a strike but who knows what will happen with Ford.  The number of people who have been added to the worker files have made our unemployment rates drop so significantly. Presumably, it should mean that our economy improves around our area. All that should help out everyone who is working and those that are looking for a job as well.

Speaking of employment, or rather unemployment, I will probably do an article dealing with the terrible situation in my area and the rest of the County dealing with the libraries. How long has the strike been going on now--- about 4 months I think. I still cannot figure out the reason why it had to be done in the first place. I must admit that I do not think that the Union is doing a very aggressive job of ending the strike and I think that Union members need to figure out what they have to do next if they want to get back to work before the end of the year. 

Of course, I might have something to say once the US elections are completed in November. Probably not a lot to be honest because that election I found pretty disgusting in the way that it is being handled and who is running for the senior Position. I have to admit that all I personally am interested in right now is who the next US President will be and what will happen in the State of Michigan.  It should be interesting as well to see what happens with the Governor of Michigan in the future.

Speaking of elections, while one is not going to happen next year in our area locally, it should be interesting to see how the members of the various Councils operate. Didn't you find it interesting reading the CBC News article recently talking about the City of Windsor Council after 2 years of it being in service.  What I am going to find fascinating is which individuals will start taking action to improve their position so that they can get more senior election positions. As an example, will the present Mayor of Windsor run again and, whether he does or not, who might decide to run against him?

I have saved a lot of newspaper articles over the last several weeks since the time of the huge storm here. I kept track of them and saved them because I expected that I would be unable to do much writing given everything that had to be accomplished from a personal perspective for my wife and me after all that had to be done because of storm that hit here. Even though I think I knew how to handle this matter because of my personal background in the legal business, nevertheless, probably because of my age and the state of health that I am in after my horrific medical situation, it was a very difficult period of time.

Anyway, dear reader, I trust that my life is coming back to normal now and that I will not have to worry so much about all the damage that was done around here that impacted us so much. There are lots of things I can write about as I have pointed out and I better start working on it as soon as possible.

Back To Normal Life

I hope so anyway.

Unfortunately, and I hope you forgive me, I just have a bit more that I want to write about considering what has been going on after the big rainstorm here so I am writing this article. It is in a sense a postscript to what I have just written before in the 5 articles concerning the flooding and what happened afterwards.

I must admit that over the last couple of weeks I dealt with major in-house flooding for the very first time in my life. It was major for me anyway even though I only had a relatively few inches of water in my basement while a number of people I heard had several feet of contaminated water and sewage! Moreover, unlike all of my other homes that we owned, we did not have a basement that was "finished" that would have required a major and expensive cleaning and update. Accordingly, our family personally was able to finish the initial cleaning of our basement quickly and then the contractors came in and did a professional job to ensure that the complete mess was removed. As well, our Insurer handled our losses in a very positive manner so that we could resolve the financial issues quite quickly and beneficially and replace all of the items that we had to throw out.

While the damage to the house was not catastrophic and was solvable and while the costs to fix everything up was within our insurance policy limits and affordable, what happened was to me very stressful, tiring and even expensive monetarily but for the insurance. It was necessary to let those on the other side know quite quickly that we could not be easily pushed around and that they had to deal with us professionally and within the terms of our relationship. Or else! Fortunately for us, that was achieved quickly and quite well notwithstanding a few difficult issues that could have caused major problems that we were able to solve right away by talking to some senior-level people.

Believe it or not, and notwithstanding my previous professional life which dealt with matters like this all the time, personally it was very difficult for me to do when it is one's own private life and family that are at stake.  Moreover, I am a lot older in age and I think that it makes situations like this much more difficult to handle as well notwithstanding my experience and knowledge.

To be direct, we solved all of our issues very quickly because of the relationships we were able to establish so soon. Yet, even now, when everything is just about finalized very well, I'm still quite tired and worn out from all of this.  I must admit that, when my wife and I walk around our neighbourhood and see our new friends who had tremendous damage in their homes because their basements were well furnished, we go up to them and comfort them as best we can to give them the support that we hope we can provide so they will be able to recover from the losses they suffered. Not just monetary losses either but personal ones.

It really is amazing looking at what is going on while we were going around to different sections of the area to see what was happening. The better weather has made this easier to do and we have been able to see a lot of damaged homes as we walk around the different sections. I have never seen anything like this before in my life with my own eyes and it has stunned me often. So many homes, especially the very large ones, have many huge mounds of bags of garbage that the owners have thrown out along with piles of damaged furniture and appliances. I just find it completely unbelievable.

However, the more interesting scene is walking around now in such a short time after the story first hit and seeing everything, at least on the outside, back to normal as best as can be and so quickly.  It is almost as if nothing had happened at all.

I am less tired than I was before and a bit more confident that everything will be brought back to "normal" at least with respect to the furnishings in my house that will be finished completely very shortly. There are no big pools of water on the ground anymore and all of the destruction to the homes that was set out in giant piles of scrap have all been removed. From the neighbourhood friends with whom I'm speaking, it seems that they too are doing well with their insurance companies and the people who are in their homes to fix up the mess.

Thank you for reading this article. Unfortunately for me at least, as much as I don't like it, it will take a bit longer for me personally to forget all of these miseries and to start over again. Also at least we know for any future problems that may arise, as stressful as it may be, it can be handled.

FLOODING PART FIVE----THE LAST CHAPTER

<SIGH> As I am sure that you understand from reading the previous sections, it was one mess after another. What else can I say?  I am truly hopeful that this is my LAST Blog on this subject.  For now anyway! 

I have never been involved in all my years of life in a flooding incident this bad personally. But here it was, in my new home that I have lived in for about 1 1/2 years. It did not seem that it was going to be a disastrous situation even though our basement had been flooded. I thought that everything would work out fine. As I am sure that you have read from previous sections of this story, was I ever wrong about that! One problem after another in such a short time. It literally wore me out.  

Let me continue telling you what happened.  I'm going to deal with this in a different way. I will tell you about each area in which we had difficulties and what has happened since the time we have tried to solve the problems of the incidents that I have described so far. 

First, what has happened in the basement to clear up the flooding. As you will recall, the representatives of the Insurer came into our house to clean up the floor after we solved what their role was to be and for whom they were acting. They did a very good job of what they did. The floors were wiped clean with one of their liquid solutions used as a cleansing agent and then four fans were put in to dry the area. That dryness operation lasted about 2 1/2 days. Naturally, the floor was somewhat dirty with all of the dirt that remained and so the representatives from the restoration company washed it all down to remove the dirt. They did a very nice job of that as well.  In the end then, what they did worked out very well for us and we were pleased to see their efforts that accomplished so much. 

Next matter: the 2nd visit to our hot water heater for repairs by the Reliance person accomplished a terrific job didn't it. Nope! The system again made horrific sounds for reasons that we did not know.  Again, without going into all the newly arrived misery, I called up the Technical Services Department and arranged for a technician, hopefully the one who had come before, to come in and finally fix up the disaster that we were suffering for the 3rd time! It just did not make sense anymore for this kind of nonsense to happen and it is something that I was not going to let happen again. I was sick and tired of the mess. 

Fortunately, the person who did come in was the Reliance repair person that I wanted. He was quite familiar with the mess happening in my basement because he had just come in before. His examination took all of about 5 minutes. What he said to me immediately after he was able to get the water heating up again was that he was going to arrange to have our complete hot water tank replaced immediately. Something he thought was clearly wrong with the entire system and needed to be changed. 

The next day another Reliance employee came in and removed the old hot water tank and installed a complete new one. That work took about an hour to accomplish. Fortunately, it has worked fine since that time producing very hot water and I hope it continues for a very long time in the future without any more problems! It had better. 

The third  matter: of course, we did have a minor little issue after the new hot water tank was installed. Much of the water was removed from the water system in the house and naturally water filled in the pipes when the system was turned on again. If you have ever had that happen, you know I'm sure, dear reader, that the pipes have air in them and they create some "bubbling" when the water is first turned on. Well, that happened in the kitchen except the "bubble" in the water tap there was so powerful that it caused the faucet aerator to completely blow out. Of course, I did not know this at the time because I had never seen such a problem come in play.  Naturally, I turned on my computer and did some investigation to try to figure out what happened and then discovered what I thought the problem was. 

Naturally, I thought I could fix it myself. It did not seem that it was a major action. The only problem was where I could find a replacement part that I needed. The solution to that was that I went to a local hardware store to get it all done. Whether it was due to so many people having to accomplish this in our area or not, the store did not have the exact part that I wanted. Fortunately, the sales rep took me to a different part of the store for a more advanced part that was available and I purchased it hoping that it would work. 

The luck was with me. I have tried to fix up the system using the old parts but they did not work. The new one worked so quickly. Its installation was amazingly simple. I accomplish that so easily. Of course, it leaked like crazy when I first put it in. Accordingly I had to add the extra part in what I purchased that the hardware representative had told me that I probably did not need. So far, so good. It works beautifully! 

Number four.  Marsha and I have had a remarkable relationship with our home Insurer. Just so you know, that Company is Aviva Canada.  I have not told you who that Company was before because our relationship was not a very good one at the start. Our horrific business relationship transformed into a fabulous one when our contact was transferred from the person with whom we had a terrible relationship at first very quickly.  After leaving that woman, we started speaking to a senior Ontario claims person who was a fine gentleman with whom we started dealing.  We spoke several times about outstanding matters and resolved them all very quickly. 

Our insurance policy presumably gave us a maximum claim of a rather limited sum of money for the type of loss that took place this time around. Fortunately, the amount that my wife and I were seeking after the flooding was below the maximum amount. I did not have to try and figure out how else there would be coverage if the amount exceeded the policy's maximum. 

Our conversations were quite direct. I had done some research into what the costs would be to fix up our basement from the flooding and to replace some of our personal property that was destroyed by the water. What I found quite remarkable was that I had no argument at all from the Insurer's representative and we worked out quite quickly what had to be done and the amount of insurance money that could be used. 

I do not intend to go into discussion about the insurance amounts but do want to say how good our telephone conversations were so that we were able to get agreement as quickly as possible and we had no disputes at all. Moreover, we had some interesting conversations about other topics that were more personally oriented because our relationship worked out so well in a very friendly manner and so promptly. In addition, we may not have to complete all of the forms we thought were necessary to finalize this matter. My wife told me that the Insurance representative told her that some of the documents were no longer necessary. 

When all of this started with the Insurer as you may recall, I was so upset about it that I seriously thought about going to a new insurer as soon as possible. After my relationship with the senior Insurance Company representative, I intend to stay with Aviva because he treated us so well! 

There may be some other matters that we resolved in this flooding mess but frankly, that's enough to talk about for now.  We were fortunate that we found some fine people to deal with and so were able quickly to bring our lives back to normal. 

Now to get back to my "every day" writing.

Our New Councillor

It is quite something when a new person had to be elected for the Council seat for your Ward. That is exactly what happened for me and my wife. 

William (Bill) Altenhof was elected for the Council position in Ward 2 in Tecumseh. His vote results in the voting were frankly unbelievable. He ran against 5 other people and overwhelmingly received the most votes. He received 676 votes just slightly less than 50% of the total  number of votes. 

I met him the first time when he was campaigning in our area. My wife and I were out for a walk when we saw him as he was canvassing on our Street. All 3 of us met and just started talking about the election. Very soon, I mentioned to him about my experience with his friend, Mike Rohrer, our Ward Councillor, who had just passed away shockingly, whom I had dealt with so many years before. I also mentioned to him that his friend as our Councillor had carried out a task for us. He literally had passed away right after he quickly looked after solving our issue. We had just agreed to meet the day before he died but unfortunately he had called me and said that he was so busy and asked if we could meet early the next week and I had agreed to do so. 

Very quickly, our talking stopped for a short time as Bill got so emotional about his friend dying. Our conversation changed very quickly into personal matters that each of us experienced and shared them with each other. It was so unbelievable how our relationship changed as if we were friends for a very long time. It was such a pleasure meeting this man and deciding instantaneously that he was going to get our votes. 

We met one more time before the election at the candidates' meeting. He saw us and came right up to my wife and me and shook our hands to say hello. I was so impressed by this gesture on his part. I was so glad that he remembered us from before. 

I am so pleased that so many other people in our Ward also were impressed with Bill and voted for him. I'm sure that they too liked this man and his potential that he offered to us. 

My wife and I wish him the best and are so hopeful that he will be a fabulous Councillor for our Ward!

FLOODING PART FOUR

As you will recall, we were waiting to meet some "unknown" representative from a Company that was supposed to now come to our house and figure out what had to be done under our Insurance Policy because of the flooding that had taken place. 

It was not the original company that supposedly had been appointed by the Insurance Company but some unknown company about which we had never heard about. To be direct about the call, I was quite surprised about it and not sure that it had really happened as disclosed because I had received no call from the Insurance Company representative that I had spoken with before.   

Just to shorten matters, I eventually got ahold of the Company that was supposed to come here originally and the lady that I spoke with had no idea about what I said because she told me that her Company was still scheduled to come to our house. She was supposed to contact the Insurance Company to find out what was going on. That was the last time I ever heard from someone from her Company. 

We finally did get an email from the Insurer's representative telling us that the new Company was supposed to come after this rather odd event took place in the manner that it did.  I just found this was a rather surprising way to act by our Insurer. 

At 9 o'clock in the morning, a representative from the repair company came to our house and examined what had gone wrong.  What he suggested needed to be done was not a huge function. After all, our basement was not decorated to be an area where people would come down either to use as a "sleeping" or "entertaining" area. Basements in our other homes had all been finished to make them look quite attractive. In this home, the basement had not been finished at all. My wife and I had decided that we were not going to fix it up and we were just going to leave it unfinished. Accordingly, all that needed to be done was to clean it up by removing the water and any dirt and germs, possessions that  had been damaged by the flooding and to put in new anti-germ chemicals in a floor cleaning. 

Simple, right? I sure thought so. All of that had taken about 15 minutes to resolve.  Then came the big mess! The gentleman from the repair company presented us with a contract to sign. I read the first couple of paragraphs on the first page and stopped reading it. I had a very simple question to ask. Under this contract, his firm was now going to be our cleaning agent and not the cleaning agent of the Insurer i.e. the representative of Marsha and me only now. I could not believe this. It made no sense whatsoever. I had no idea who this company was, never phoned them in the first place to come over and visit with us to figure out what had to be done, was certainly not going to pay them anything or be responsible for payments to them yet now we were supposed to appoint them as our representative to fix up our house.  This was absolutely unbelievable to me and something I would refuse to do. I could not figure out why this was being proposed. 

Again, the long and short of it was that I told representative that we were not prepared at all to act this way and that he would have to have the appointment from the Insurer to do the work and act on their behalf or we would go out to find someone else to do the job. This was just completely unbelievable and unacceptable to me and I refused to do what he wanted.   

All of this discussion took about an hour and a half and at the same time that he was talking with us, the representative from Reliance came here to take a look at the new problems that we were having with the hot water tank. We were asked by the repair company gentleman not to refuse to deal with his firm and that he would talk to someone senior from his Company to find out what they wanted to do and that he would get back to me later on in the day. 

To be direct about it, I was upset. This was a bizarre way for a company that our Insurer brought in to try to act now. Accordingly, I called our employee of the Insurance Company who had been brought in to handle this matter to discuss. That did not turn out very well at all either. Within a very few short minutes, and during our discussion, she unbelievably hung up the telephone rather than answering some of my questions that I was posing. I was furious! 

That was it as far as I was concerned. I immediately contacted her company, our Insurer, and demanded to speak to someone in a senior position immediately. Fortunately, one of the senior Ontario representatives was around and we spoke on the telephone. I explained to him how angry I was and how disturbed about what was happening and how I was treated. I asked for a new Company employee to be appointed for our home because I was not going to talk to the person who was supposed to be my representative again. Regretfully he told me that they had no employees available to contact me because they were so busy so he would have to be my contact with the Company. 

Our conversation started off in a very direct manner. However, as time went on, our conversation became much more casual and on a much more friendly basis.  I hoped for the best in the future in my relationship with the Insurer after dealing with this gentleman. 

I heard from the repair person later on in the day and he agreed that his firm would come in and do the work required and that we would not have to appoint that firm as our client and sign a contract with them. I was satisfied now that the relationship that we were establishing was the only one that I was prepared to enter into to resolve our flooding problems. 

Eventually, representatives from that repair company came in and started doing the work. One of the first things that they did do was remove our huge elliptical machine that we had in the basement and which I used now so often because of the concerns that they had as to its fitness because of the water in the basement that covered some of its parts. They also removed many other articles that had gotten so wet and set some of them to dry out as well. Once all of that was done they were in a position to clean up the floor.  It was completely cleaned up and fans were put in to dry it. That drying process was supposed to take several days. The noise level to be honest was high and a bit disturbing especially in night time so sleeping was a little more difficult.  Nevertheless, it had to be done. 

Of course, there is more to talk about concerning some additional troubling matters. You can read about that in our next posting and what had to be done next.

FLOODING PART THREE

You will have to excuse me, dear reader, but I think I have just about lost track of time and days after what has happened here in the condo where my wife and I live. I am trying very hard to let you know what is going on with our condo problems. You will get all the facts but don't worry so much whether my time that I am giving you is exactly right or off a little bit.

I have to tell you that it was last Wednesday, early in the morning, when I first started writing this article. Or at least I thought it was!  So many things had been going on over the past few days before that frankly I might be telling you something that happened on the wrong time frame. But don't worry too much, because it all fits in together so that you will know what happened.

Just so that you will remember, here are the 2 big areas that we had to deal with:

"However, as usual, we got a late phone call that woke us up. This time it was from a gentleman from a company that we had never heard of that told us that he wanted to come to our house on Monday at 9 AM to look at what had to be done because he'd been appointed by the Insurer to do the work. Of course, that was a surprise to me because another company was supposed to come and see us as the Insurance Company representative..."

Here is the second one:

"Someone is supposed to come from the Reliance firm sometime this afternoon to figure out what is going wrong. Of course, that has ruined what my wife and I intended to do on Sunday but what the heck, we can now rest at home."

Let me deal with the Reliance matter first.  One of their employees from out of town who was working in the area because of the disastrous weather had come and fixed up our natural gas hot water heater. Or so we thought.

The water heater was making a horrific sound and, given the fact that it had been around for 10 years, I was concerned that it might need replacement because it had broken down. Alternatively, I was also worried that the problems after the heavy rain might have created some difficulties that required fixing up.  The gentleman came and eliminated the noise completely. I was so happy but unfortunately my happiness only lasted for about 10 hours. At about 3 o'clock in the morning on Monday morning, I was awoken by the same horrible sound coming from the water heater in the basement that I heard before. I contacted Reliance again at around that time but believe it or not their phone system was completely busy. I could not get through to an operator at all. Can you imagine how bad the situation was with Reliance equipment as a result of the flooding.

It all took about an hour and, to be quite direct about it all, I was furious about what happened. I could not believe that it seemed that the same problem was still around and even the repair man who had been to our house before was concerned that there was a much bigger problem but hoped that he had solved it.  Unfortunately he had not.

Again, without going through all of the misery and the extent of the coverage that I had with Reliance in our phone call, they agreed that someone would come and visit our premises on Monday. I was pleased about that until no one came on Monday at all! That is correct. That story I was given when I called Reliance to find out why no one had been to my condo yet was that all of the afternoon appointments, which mine was, were cancelled because of the amount of work that had begun in the morning and still had to be completed. Can you believe that because I could not. I was not warned about that at all although the Reliance employee I talked to believed that all of the customers involved had been contacted.  Without going through our not so pleasant "conversation," it was agreed that a service person would come between 7 AM and 11 AM the next day to try to figure out what was going on.

Naturally, no one came to our residence between 7 AM and 8 AM in the morning so I called Reliance again. I must admit that I never really expected someone to come in 7 AM because of past experiences about when the employees actually started working but I wanted to know what time the repair person was coming. Regretfully, the operator could not tell me at all when that person was coming! I was furious. I called immediately after our telephone call ended one of the senior officers that I knew in our region because of the mess that our family has had with Reliance over about the last year and a half concerning our new gas system that we installed. I think that he was rather shocked about what happened and told me that he would contact one of the repair people and have him come over immediately.

Believe it or not, that happened. One of his senior employees was fixing up another home first and then was told to come to our house immediately thereafter. He did so. The gentleman who came was extremely experienced. He looked over our system and did what he thought would work. Brilliantly, it did!  He told us in addition that if there still were problems in the future not necessarily to get a new system but to try and have the old one repaired. As far as he was concerned, the older systems might even be better than the new ones.

Accordingly, so far, everything is working with the natural gas water heater. Fingers crossed that everything will be fine.  Our technician was absolutely superb in what he was doing and what he explained to me when finished.

Now let me tell you what was going on at exactly the same time as this repair job.  But I will tell you about this in another article.

FLOODING, PART TWO

The story continues as only could happen to our family it would appear! 

Everything seemed to be working out so wonderfully. There was no reason for me to be concerned about what happened because of the flood coming into our basement. It was all going to be resolved in such a nice manner.

After all, I told you what a good job my daughter, Melissa, and her boyfriend, Bill, did to fix up our basement by removing the water. The work they did was wonderful!  I also told you that I was waiting for my son to come over because we found out about another problem in our system and so could not go and pick him up to help us out with the tasks that we wanted him to do.

Here is how I described the situation now:

"Of course, a new problem arose starting at about 5 AM. I started hearing a rather substantial sound coming from the hot water pump. I was terrified that it may have been damaged by the water that had come in and was now breaking down. Naturally, I would have liked to take a very warm bath in the morning to try to get myself back to normal as well but was not going to do it if this hot water tank was coming close to turning off. That had happened before to me in a house that I lived in when the tank completely collapsed and naturally leaked water."

So what did we do? We contacted Reliance immediately and they promised to send in one of their employees to take a look at the system and do whatever repairs were necessary.  No, I want you to stop thinking that no one came over. In fact, the Reliance employee came in within the timeframe that he was supposed to do so. It made me really pleased.

Interestingly, he was not an employee of Reliance who lived or even worked in this area. Rather, he came in from London, Ontario to help out with all of the difficulties that customers here had. Obviously, Windsor/Essex Reliance customers must have had a lot of problems after the flooding for Reliance to bring in employees from out of town to provide assistance.

The Reliance employee came in around noon-time to our house to see if he could fix the problem. I was quite impressed with him and thought that he knew exactly what he should do. He certainly seemed to me at the time able to do so in the way that he discussed the situation.

I'm not going to go through all the testing that he took but it was quite extensive as far as I was concerned. I do not think that he found a disastrous situation but suggested that there was a problem with the hot water motor system. The motor at the top of the tank seemed to be extremely noisy to me when I first came down to listen to the furnace system and I think he agreed with me because he chose to replace it with a new system. After all, the unit itself was about 10 years old since the entire system had been put into the basement in 2006 by a previous owner. We took it over when we purchased the house.

To be direct about it, it worked wonderfully after the new system was installed. The noise level reduced to virtually nothing when it started to operate. What a big change that was from what I had heard before.  Everything was now superb as far as I was concerned. Accordingly, my wife and I were able to go and pick up my son so that we could do some grocery shopping because we were running out of a lot of food.  After that was finished, my son agreed that he would wash the entire floor in the basement in order to disinfect the floor from any germs that may have been picked up. That floor could now be relatively clean until it was properly finished by the company that would be retained to do a proper cleaning of our entire house that was required because of the flood.

Of course he did a fantastic job doing that, spending about 2 hours cleaning the basement with tools that were pretty difficult to work with. We had gone to a nearby hardware store to try and get some good tools to use. However, by the time that we got there, they had pretty much sold all of their utensils that we could use.  Accordingly, my son had to do a fairly difficult and lengthy task with some tools that were hard to use that we already have. No problem though for him. He worked through it all and worked through it all wonderfully!

After we took my son home after dinner, my wife and I were both pretty tired from the long and tough day that we had. Naturally, we both decided to go to bed earlier to get some sleep. However, as usual, we got a late phone call that woke us up. This time it was from a gentleman from a company that we had never heard of that told us that he wanted to come to our house on Monday at 9 AM to look at what had to be done because he'd been appointed by the Insurer to do the work. Of course, that was a surprise to me because another company was supposed to come and see us as the Insurance Company representative.  Nevertheless, we allowed him to come over.

On Sunday morning, my wife and I started talking about this. We had no idea who this new company was and why they were coming rather than the company that was supposed to come as the Insurer's representative.

Again, to shorten the story, we learned that the company that had just called us the night before was in fact approved to come to our place.  However, I decided to call the other company to tell them how disappointed I was that they had decided not to come without telling us. So I called them up early Sunday morning.

What a wonderful conversation I had. They had no idea what I was talking about. I told them that I was really looking forward to their company coming because it seemed to have a good reputation. We learned that they were supposed to be calling us on Sunday to set up an appointment! Nothing had changed as far as they were concerned!

Well, what a nice surprise that was. Another mess in which we were involved that we didn't know anything about.  All I know now is that they are supposed to be calling up the Insurance Company to find out what is going on and may be, or may not be coming to our house to examine what is going on. Who knows if anyone is going to call us to tell us what is happening and who is coming.

Anyway, that is where we are now. Someone is supposed to come from the Reliance firm sometime this afternoon to figure out what is going wrong. Of course, that has ruined what my wife and I intended to do on Sunday but what the heck, we can now rest at home.

Do you want to know what is going to happen next? So do I. Just make sure that you are in a position to read my next article that I hope to publish very soon after the next session with the other parties.

FLOODED!

Yes, dear reader, that is exactly what happened to my wife and I this week in our house in Tecumseh. For the first time in our lives!   Now this may help you understand why I have not written anything on my website for a few extra days. 

Our home's basement was completely covered in water as the huge thunderstorm kept sending a flood of water over our area for so many hours. Above is what it looked like outside. It was all so dramatic to me at a very strange time so late in my life. 

Something like this has never happened to me before in all of my 71+ years. It was a complete shock to me that I never expected at all or really knew how to deal with. Oh sure, there have been a heavy rains around here since I moved in just over a year ago and where I used to live. Frankly, there was no water inside our house in the early morning, around 9 AM, when I looked into the basement to make sure that everything was okay.  That is just standard to what I did before in other thunderstorms that hit my house both here and in previous locations.  Then, about 40 minutes later, I heard some tinkling sounds.  Again, I went to the basement door upstairs and looked downwards. This time I thought I saw some waterstaining on the floor. I could not believe what I was seeing so I called Marsha to take a look and to tell me what she saw.  To my complete shock, she saw what I did! 

Downstairs we went to try to find out what was going on. For me, with my bad leg condition after my fall, using the staircase is very difficult. Nevertheless, down I went because I had to do so. To be blunt I was shocked out of my mind. I could not believe how much water I was seeing on the floor when only a short time before there was not a drop there. Several inches of water were now all over our basement floor and coming in so hard and fast to make that water level increase in size. I just could not believe that this was really happening. 

I was happy at least because our water pumps down there were sending out water but I could not believe that they were not sending out enough water to prevent the flooding that was taking place. It was just so unusual for me that I found it hard to figure out exactly what to do. Nothing going on made any sense to me whatsoever. 

I was so calm, cool and collected a short time before as I was on my computer doing work. I was not concerned about a single thing because our basement was so dry. Now, we were flooded. I just could not believe what I was now seeing and what I was worrying about our future. I had no idea at first what needed to be done and who could do it. It just was that stunning for me mentally. 

The working of the pumps downstairs was so unusual to me. Oh sure, I heard them working before. Naturally, water would come in and would flow into the hole that was built there to help deal with excess water. Naturally, as that hole was filled up with water to the right point, the pump would go on for a few seconds and empty out the hole so quickly. It was a given standard. That was not happening now. That pump would go on and take water out of the hole but it never turned off. There was so much water coming in that it was constantly pushing that water out of the hole. It was continuously working in the "on" position.

Even more surprising, is that the 2nd pump in that hole started working. I have always purchased a 2nd pump no matter where I lived as the emergency pump to operate in case the first one happened to break down. I've never heard that pump ever operate. This was the first time. What was even more interesting is that a huge siren type sound went off as it operated, presumably as a warning to the person who lived in the house that there was a big water problem in the area. It stayed on and on not closing down at all for some reason. Presumably, its process requires the siren to sound as it operates. I've still not figured out how to stop that sound but all I do know is that when the water level was reduced, the emergency alarm went off as that pump turned off again as well. 

We called both of our children to let them know what happened. I would have liked my son, Michael, to come over to help but unfortunately he does not have a car so he needed a ride from us. That was not something that I could offer to him even if I wanted to do so. I would not have gone even if I could given that there was a heavy thunderstorm outside going on. That is a dangerous situation. However, in my case, it is even worse. While looking outside, I could see that the main street in front of our house was being impacted by the water. The water level there was filling up and eventually went over the road edges. Not only that, I was supposed to go to our car dealer that morning because we were not certain if we were having a car issue with our new vehicle. I was not going to drive therefore in this storm and then have the vehicle completely breakdown as we were driving.  Therefore, my son could not come over to help us at that time. 

I spoke to my daughter, Melissa, and told her what was going on. She said that she would speak to her boyfriend, Bill, to have him come over as soon as he possibly could to help us out because he did not live very far from our home. He at least had a relatively new car that he could operate at that time and said that he would be willing to do so. I found out later on how difficult it was when he approached the main street that would lead to our house. He had to take an "unusual" route on that road in order to get to our home because that street was virtually flooded up completely and there were cars stuck in the roadway eventually. However, fortunately, he made it all right! 

Bill spent many hours in our basement as the storm started stopping. He was pushing out all of the water that had come in to our condo out of the basement. He was forced to move around furniture and other goods in the basement to minimize the flooding damage. Of course, he had to determine what was damaged beyond repair and put it in a spot so that it could be removed outside later on to be taken away hopefully by the Garbage Service. 

Naturally, we did not have any particularly useful tools that he could use so I saw him holding a sweeper in each hand so he could force the water out of the basement through the pump hole. It was truly amazing how well he operated in our very large basement.  He arrived at our condo around 11 in the morning and did not leave until 9 o'clock at night. He worked all of that time and did a remarkable job of emptying most of the water from our basement. The several inches of water disappeared through his efforts since they were not leaving because the floor was fairly straight and so were not leaking out! 

The next day, he and Melissa, came over to finish the work that he had started the day before. They spent several hours in pushing out the water that was still in the basement and then throwing out all the garbage that he had set aside the day before. My daughter also decided that the stairs that everyone had used to walk down into the basement to help clean it up needed washing. So she did!  

I'm not going to go into a lot of the gory details about what was done other than to say that the efforts were very successful. By Saturday morning, the basement was in relatively good shape being quite dry after the mess that was here before. Of course, a new problem arose starting at about 5 AM. I started hearing a rather substantial sound coming from the hot water pump. I was terrified that it may have been damaged by the water that had come in and was now breaking down. Naturally, I would have liked to take a very warm bath in the morning to try to get myself back to normal as well but was not going to do it if this hot water tank was coming close to turning off. That had happened before to me in a house that I lived in when the tank completely collapsed and naturally leaked water.

Later on in the morning, I heard that sound again and decided to call the water heater company to have someone come out to take a look at a possible emergency. No problem you probably would think. It was a possible break down. Unfortunately, not to the agent I spoke with on the telephone who told me that someone would and come and take a look at it on October 6. I did get slightly "angry" and told her that was unacceptable and that I needed immediately to speak with the manager to get this changed.  Somehow, she was able to change things and someone was supposed to come before 1 PM today to take a look. Of course, let's see if that happens. 

Of course, the program we expected to have with my son on Saturday morning had to change. He was supposed to come over early this morning and then go shopping with us so we could stock up on food, especially considering that it is the Thanksgiving weekend next weekend and we wanted to have enough food to celebrate that day with our children. That usually takes to around lunchtime. After lunch, we expected to have him clean the basement floor again and some of the walls with special liquid to remove any bacteria that might be there. We wanted to have the house cleaned as well as we could before the outside firm came in to fix everything up which was going to be some time in the future that was not yet known to us. 

Naturally, that was another failure. There was no way that he could come to our house easily because of the big distance. Normally, we pick him up. This time it was going to be difficult. We had to wait for a technician to come over to take a look at the equipment that I feared might have been broken down.  My wife and I could not go over to his place to have him come over here because we were afraid that we might lose the phone call from the technician who was just about to come over. That meant we had to wait here for that phone call. I'm writing this at about a quarter to noon and we have received no calls yet so who knows when someone's coming over. Oh well, it looks like I might have to make another "unpleasant" phone call if no one calls us before 1 PM tell us when he/she is coming over. I'm not going to lose my afternoon being able to buy food that will be useful for us to eat next week. 

Anyway, that is what has happened so far. I'm hopeful that everything will work itself out all right and that we have not suffered too badly because of the storm. I'm very hopeful as well that, because of my children's actions, my wife and I will not have to worry about all of the mess that we are in and that it will all be worked out successfully. 

As for you, dear reader, I'm trust that, if you have had some problems because of the monstrous rainstorm, you have been able to deal with them in a satisfactory manner to bring your life back to normal.

Update service story coming soon.  And what a huge surprise!