The Aftermath

So when we got to our house this morning, the water had completely receded. About two feet up on the side of the green Civic ('99), you could see the water line. First thing we did was open the door and try to start it. Damn if the thing didn't fire right up. Three inches of water in the floorboard, seats soaked, water pooled in the bag around the shifter and it fired right up. Shot water out the tailpipe for about three minutes, but it started. So one of the two cars in our driveway is still good.

It makes sense, really. Car engines are sealed up. All the water could've hurt was the electronics. So far so good. It's drying out over at Malice & Sys's mom's place.

I think we checked on the car first to put off opening the door to the house. The driveway and front porch were coated with about a half-inch of mud, and it looked like the water line ended about three to four inches above the bottom of the door.

When we unlocked it and opened it, the first thing I noticed was how cool it was. The goddamn A/C had never quit running. The power was still on. And most everything was dry.

it looks like the water came in the house in a stream from under the door, made a beeline to the back of the house, then drained into the crawlspace. Sure, the hardwoods look awful, but... the house wasn't full of water. In fact, whatever water had come into the house was gone and the floor was dry. We might have some warping of the legs of the dining room table, but so far so good.

Then again, the crawlspace of our house is still entirely full of water. It's a giant, stagnant mold and mildew factory waiting to happen. I gotta figure out how to get that pumped out. We would have just gone and got a sump pump and got after it, but all the equipment rental places close at noon on Saturday.

So with the house largely in tact (and the Precious surviving, thanks for asking) we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. And then we opened the garage.

Total devastation. Where we had half an inch of mud on our front porch, there was that coating everything in the garage. In it we had: 1 refrigerator, washer, dryer, 1 Honda Shadow (Sabre) motorcycle, 1 Specialized Allez roadbike, 1 Specialized Hardrock mt. bike, about 1500 comic books, a christmas tree, a bunch of extra dishes, my golf clubs, the gas grill, step ladder, a bunch of buckets of paint, 1 Trek mt. bike, and a whole bunch of other shit i can't remember now. You know what stuff looked like in the Silent Hill movie, coated with all that soot? Imagine wet red mud and you'll have a good idea of what everything looks like. Looks like someone dropped a red mud bomb in my garage, and you'd never know it looking at the outside of the house.

Fuck me. Worst still, the goddamn insurance adjuster hasn't contacted me, nor has my insurance agent (like a good neighbor, my ass) been by to check up on us. All those commercials about State Farm agents checking up on you? Bullshit. The people on my phone told me not to take anything out of the house until the adjuster had been by. You know what he place is going to smell like by Monday? Get. Here. Now.

So on the bright side of things, as long as I can get the water pumped out from the crawlspace and there's not huge foundation damage or too much water in the A/C ductwork, we should be able to continue living there, even as early as tomorrow. Then again:



I'm not sure how much water it's going to take to send the creek over its banks again. Perhaps if it's not as hard a rain as it was yesterday. From what I heard, Stillwater got 5.5 inches of rain in 45 mins, and 8 inches in two hours.

Thanks for your well-wishes. Even though we lost all the stuff in the garage, I feel like we (so far) dodged a bullet. No major repairs in the house. As long as the ductwork isn't loaded with water...

out.