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.