Sunday, June 22, 2008

I survived the 2008 Flood





This has been a whirlwind two weeks. I have lived in my house for over 30 years and never even had a drop of water in the basement. We had water in the basement plus water on all the streets around us. We spent 4 solid days pumping water out trying to save our appliances, the water finally stopped running this past Friday, it was ground water, not flood water at least. I guess there was no place for it to go except our basements, most everyone in our neighborhood lost all their furnaces, washers, dryers, hot water heaters and freezers. We only lost our hot water heater. It is an experience that I will never forget. At one point they wanted to shut our power off and evacuate us. After the water quit running we spent two days tearing out dry wall and insulation, now the it is drying out. I have muscles that are aching that I never knew I had :). The folks south of here had it even worse. The second photo is of the nature trail bridge that we walked on all the time. It was an old railroad bridge and line turned into a nature trail. My husband's Dad worked construction on this bridge before he enlisted in the Army to serve in WWI.



10 comments:

Iowa Victory Gardener said...

IGW, I've been worried about you in the last two weeks. Now I know it was justified. Our basement flooded for the first time in 10 yrs too, but fortunately our water heater, washer and new furnace were spared, but we have a lot of stuff that will have to go to a dumpster soon. *sigh*, so I know what you have to deal with!

Definitely has interfered with our usual planting here, but we've made big progress this weekend!

Good luck over your way!

IVG

Iowa Gardening Woman said...

Thanks IVG, this has been a crazy spring, I hope things settle down soon so I can get back to the things that matter like blogging and gardening :).

You should see our neighborhood, the piles of things pulled from basements is amazing.

Anonymous said...

Hello,
we have seen so many devastating pictures on ABC News. The flooding of Iowa and other areas.
What a terrible loss..
I am glad you are o.k.
Gisela

Teresa said...

And we think it rains in Seattle! Good luck getting all dried out. It does sound like you were spared the worst of it in your area.

Connie said...

So sorry to hear about your flooded basement. What a lot of work to get it cleaned and dried out.
Glad you are okay and that it wasn't worse.

joey said...

Bless you. We must all remember to thank God for a normal day.

this is my patch said...

I'm rather out of touch living over here in the UK. I hope you manage to get back to normal life very soon. x

Sally said...

Oh Jenny! I'm so happy that you didn't have any more damage than you did. Hasn't this been a stinker? Great pictures too. Did you see mine? Isn't it just amazing what water will do? Have a great weekend.

Eve said...

I love your blog and I am happy that you made it through..we weren't so lucky with Katrina, (Home lost) but life does go on and we have recovered..Love your dogs and cats...I have some of those too..see my avtar..her Mama was killed after the Hurricane by a dump truck.
It is amazing how gardens will come back after disasters. Trees, plants, flowers,,,will bloom again..and families do too..things are just things,,but gardens and family, they are forever.

tina said...

What a nightmare with that flooding and all the damage. Hope things are back to normal now.