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!