08 June 2010

When it rains, it pours and when it floods...

What a day. The result of April and May's wintery weather and then the unseasonably warm weather this week? High water. Way higher than usual. The last time it flooded like this was 1983 when I was just 3 years old. We spent the day yesterday pulling tons of stuff out of my mom's basement and then trying to get the water cleaned out. It was mostly dry this morning, until the water level rose again. Here are some pictures from yesterday, but the water is even higher today.

He doesn't have to stand in water, he just is.

The road to a sister's house.

The mares and foals.

We had to dig a trench in the road to relieve pressure on the bridge. It washed out today anyway.

Our yard. The kids are having a great time.
Yesterday was a really rough day, and it's still not over, but I did learn some things. First of all, de-clutter. I've always heard the statement "if there was a fire, what would you save?..." I would change that to, "If there was a flood, what would you not want to drag out of the house, soaking wet?" Second, have an emergency plan. I was so overwhelmed, I had no idea where to start working. As a result, several old blankets are safe and sound, but some of my food storage is ruined. I cried about that. And last, it takes a humble person to allow neighbors to go through your horribly unorganized and overcrowded basement. I was mortified when a few ladies showed up to help. I desperately needed the help, but it was so embarrassing to let them see the absolute messiest part of the house.
Well, I'm off to pump water out again.

2 comments:

  1. Wow-that's a lot of melted snow! We had water like that in January-our property is bordered by a creek. That creek is fed by several local mountains as far as rain run off, but also the mountains surrounding Flagstaff and they got LOTS of snow this year. We were glad that the night time temps stayed below freezing so that we got a small amount of melt each day rather than a bunch all at once. You might want to check the USGS web site for water level meters near you and know what's normal and get a bit more lead time for this kind of thing. That's what we do-the monitoring station closest to us is 3 hours by water flow. Did that make sense? In other words-what it reads right now is what we'll see behind our house 3 hours later. So we knew we had a 3 hour window to evacuate if needed. We never did have to, but the water sure got high here!
    Did a lot of your stuff get ruined? That'd be sad.

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  2. It looks like the worst is over. The water dropped quite a bit last night. We should have been fine in the basement. The water never actually ran into the house from the creek, it came up the drains. Then when we got those plugged, water started seeping through the cracks in the concrete floor. We thought we were prepared, but we weren't. I haven't gone through anything yet to see what's okay and not. Hopefully tomorrow we can get the basement dried out and start putting thing together again. Thanks for that website.

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