The flood of 2011

*Click on the pictures to see them enlarged. You can see the water better that way*

This is the full story of the flood. I know that we were truly blessed and that we didn’t get anywhere CLOSE to others, but it is still pretty devastating no matter how much water you have. I am so thankful for the guidance of the Spirit and the wonderful, WONDERFUL people that came to help us out!

On February 25th, Friday, we were hit extremely hard with a HUGE snowstorm. We got roughly 12 inches of snow and we all had a snow day, Luke included.

Fast forward to Sunday, the 27th. It started raining. Pouring. We had a full-on thunderstorm. I woke up around 1:30 a.m. and Mac was crying. I put him back down to sleep and thought, “It is raining so hard, I should go check our basement.” I quickly pushed the thought aside because in the 50 years that the previous owners had lived here, they had no flooding, plus, I was sleepy!

I woke up around 6:45 a.m. to get Livi off to school. I was sitting on the couch eating some cereal, when I thought, “I should go check the basement.” Again, I put it off. I knew that she would be getting on the bus soon, so I would wait…but again I thought, “GO CHECK THE BASEMENT.” A few seconds later our neighbor, Cathy called and said, “Katie, have you checked your basement? We have had a ton of flooding on the street, even in homes that have never flooded.” Ok, red light going off in my head…so I head down to the basement..to find this:

You can’t tell from the pictures, but there is about 2 inches of water right here. It had gone down from about 4 inches…

This is the crawl space (below). It is about 5 feet off the ground and it had about 2-3 inches in it by the time we found it. The wall directly below it was extremely wet, so we know that a ton of water came in through here. As a side note, it is still leaking in there. Luke went in with a wet vac (30 emptied tanks x 8gallons + 4 emptied tanks x12 gallon shopvac=lots of water!!) and squeegee and got it almost completely dry. Today, the 11th, there is water around the edges. I am nervous to see what happens after it snowed today, and will melt over the next few days…oi!)

Soaking wet laundry room. The clean clothes in those baskets had about 3 inches of dirty water on the bottom of them=clean in bleach. Everything got cleaned in bleach…everything.

Many of the boxes you see in this picture, by the furnace were NOT there before. The water carried them over there. You can also see the water heater in the lower left hand corner of the pic. That afternoon we noticed that we didn’t have any hot water. Greg K. relit it and we didn’t think anything of it, until that evening. No hot water. Luke went back down there and noticed that the pilot was out because there was so much water underneath it. He tried lighting it several times, then ended up drying out as much water as he could. THEN he tried lighting it again when it literally BLEW up in his face. You know those movies where the fire goes right over people and doesn’t touch them? Yep, that’s what happened to Luke. Except for a few singed eyebrows and hand hairs, he was ok. I heard the BOOM upstairs..

The after:

Much cleaner (floor bleached)…you can see some of the water stains on the far wall. Hmmm, apparantly the flooding wasn’t just from the crawl space and 4 drains..

The playroom after:

notice: no toys

The garage:

It no longer holds the cars, but the toys!

Part of our street:

Out of 40 homes, 35 were flooded. The ones by the creek were the worst=4 FT of water!!!

Our garbage haul, mostly boxes:

This neighbor had even MORE garbage this past week:

Some stories to remember:

I called several people in the ward because first I didn’t know what to do and 2nd because I was supposed to go vting that morning. I ended up calling Shanna and she quickly offered to get the boys. She came to pick them up and dropped off several fans and her dehumidifier. Our neighbor, Cathy, came over around 8:30 to help. She brought a shopvac, squeegee, several laundry baskets, and mops. She helped clear everything from the basement (on the finished side), when Jennifer M. came over with her son, Zach, to help as well. They carried all of the toys up to the garage. Cathy’s husband, Chuck, came over a bit later and helped as well.

Around 10:00 or so, I was going to go and pick Luke up. I told Chuck and Cathy that I would be back. When we got back home, Chuck and Cathy had bleached the entire finished side. They were amazing! Jennifer had brought me lunch and it was so nice to not worry about it.

A few hours later, after Luke had been working on the crawl space for a while, Greg K. came on over and brought his bigger shop vac. Between the 2 of them, it went by a bit quicker. Greg helped a ton by lugging all of our crap stuff to the clean side. He left around 5:30 or so.

Shanna brought us dinner..and it was SO good! Tanya brought us dinner that we ate as a snack that same night AND the next day. Both were SO needed and I am thankful that they were thinking of us that day.

Our kids were with Shanna until 8:30 p.m. that night. I am not sure how she did it, but the word, “saint” doesn’t come close to what we think of her!

Other stories:

Neighbor by the creek (Linda): She has lived in her home for quite a few years. After several years of flooding, she finally had someone come in and backhoe around the entire home and seal it. Then they got a sump pump installed (no one on the street has a sump pump). She asked the contractors if this would prevent flooding because she was planning on putting up drywall, getting carpet, nice furniture, etc. He said she’d be fine. She made him put that in writing. She got 4ft of water.

The neighbor about 5 houses to the East, Tim and Connie, had just gotten their basement remodeled with carpet, nice furniture, fireplace, the works…he is also a musician who had several guitars and amps. He woke up and found them all floating in 2 ft of water.

Another neighbor close to the creek said that he was fed up with all of the flooding and he wants to just fill in the entire basement with cement…