It's the FLOOD!

The Great Valley Guardian · **on:** June 13, 2011, 07:10:20 PM

I'm certain the topic made no sense, so I'll be more than happy to clear things up. Last week exactly at Midnight my home along with my entire neighborhood including the Walmart ONE MILE AWAY lost power. Now normally that wouldn't be such a bad thing, unfortunately for us, the loss of electricity lasted 18 hours! And, that's not even the beginning of my problems. You see two minutes after we lost power, a rain storm of seemingly biblical proportions opened up above our community and dumped six inches of rain, thunder, lightning, and started a fire somewhere close by as well. And since our sub-pumps ran on the electricity in our home, we had no way of removing the water that collected overnight. So you can imagine my surprise and my families shock and horror to realize that in the morning our basement was flooded with a foot and four inches of water!

We lost so many things, games (Including our ORIGINAL Sega Genesis console, and our entire library of games), clothes (Including my mothers wedding dress and three $500 leather jackets that belonged to my brother), luggage, a few 'personal' safety devices (Not to mention a short sword and a trio of throwing stars), and things of that nature including four family heirlooms that have been in our family for five or six generations! Oddly enough, out of everything that was salvageable in the flood, was 90% of our christmas ornaments

Just goes to prove nature has a sense of humor.

But in any case I simply needed to vent this info now that I have a moment to breath! When we aren't all at work, my folks and I have been dragging things up from our basement and sorting through it to see if it can be saved. This has gone on for about one week now, and we're hoping to be done by this weekend.

And that is the end of my rant. On a personal side note to Brekclub85, I would personally like to thank you for being an absolute SAINT in waiting for the next TDV chapter. As it turns out, the power outage wiped the second half of the story from my hard-drive, and I'm still trying my hardest to recover the files. But I assure you it will be up soon.

Petrie85 · **Reply #1 on:** June 13, 2011, 07:18:41 PM

Gee I'm sorry to hear you lost a ton of stuff during the flood. I'm glad everything is alright. And I hope you can save some of your stuff that was lost in the flood. I'm glad you and your family where okay during that huge storm you got.

Mumbling · **Reply #2 on:** June 14, 2011, 02:13:53 AM

Darn that's quite the flood then. Too bad you lost all those precious items. Good luck with sorting the rest of the stuff. At least no one got hurt

jansenov · **Reply #3 on:** June 14, 2011, 03:37:51 AM

You were out of luck. But at least you'll be prepared next time.

Saft · **Reply #4 on:** June 14, 2011, 07:09:32 AM

Yeah that sucks. Hopefully you will be able to restore the damages and lucky that no one was hurt.

tempestwheel · **Reply #5 on:** June 14, 2011, 11:24:32 AM

Geez....that really sucks. Like everyone else said, at least you and your family didn't get hurt.

And don't worry, I can still wait more for the next chapter.

Petrie85 · **Reply #6 on:** June 14, 2011, 08:40:38 PM

How did everything go so far? I hope you managed to save a bunch of stuff.

tempestwheel · **Reply #7 on:** June 14, 2011, 10:03:57 PM

^ Yeah, I hope you managed to save more things than you lost for good....

Mirumoto_Kenjiro · **Reply #8 on:** June 15, 2011, 02:31:45 AM

If by any chance you can send some of that flood to my end? We're getting wildfires like crazy around here. I had to move my new dog from my friend's house (we're still making room for him) to the animal shelter I work at. For him, we should have him home for certain on Sat.

Petrie85 · **Reply #9 on:** June 15, 2011, 07:05:24 AM

I hear you on that. I feel bad that this has happened.

Kor · **Reply #10 on:** June 15, 2011, 09:56:22 AM

Sorry to hear what happened. I hope most of your stuff can be salvaged.

It reminds me of something I saw years ago when I use to watch pbs on a show called ask this old house. It was a similar situation where a family would have their basement flood regularly since the power would go out and their pump is powered by electricity. The plumber guy on the show put in some sort of backup pump that was powered by the water pressure of the water pipes going into the house. Not sure if something like that may work or still be available or what it would be called. As I recall it had something like a floater or something like is in a toilet tank so it would only come on if the water level got to a certain level. Not sure if it had a connection to tell if the power was out in the house or not. He did say that though it would raise the water bill when it worked, that it would keep the basement from being flooded over the level of the floater thing that would turn it on. It won't help the situation now but may prevent it happening next time, if that happens from time to time.

Petrie85 · **Reply #11 on:** June 15, 2011, 05:29:35 PM

That sounds like a great idea for him to do or try. I hope this never happens again.

LBTFan13 · **Reply #12 on:** June 16, 2011, 01:03:59 AM

Wow Rick. That's a really tough event to pull through. I can't imagine losing all of those belongings in a flood, and I hope that you and your family are able to recover as many things as possible.

Pangaea · **Reply #13 on:** June 16, 2011, 04:13:39 AM

Oh no! I'm so sorry, GVG!

I wish I could offer more than just my sympathy, and the best of luck in salvaging as many of your belongings as possible.

Petrie85 · **Reply #14 on:** June 16, 2011, 08:48:53 AM

I do as well but My hearts goes out to you and hoping for the best.

kjeldo · **Reply #15 on:** June 16, 2011, 03:21:47 PM

Good luck with the mess,

Petrie85 · **Reply #16 on:** June 17, 2011, 09:16:02 PM

I hope you have everything taken care of.

trulyfantasticme · **Reply #17 on:** June 21, 2011, 12:40:03 AM

Whoa! Yowza! that sucks! I'm sorry.

It's kinda funny, I live near a river that's at its highest point, I thought it was gunna flood.

Until the good Lord told me it wasn't gunna so...

The Great Valley Guardian · **Reply #18 on:** June 21, 2011, 01:31:41 AM

Alright folks update time!

Well the water has been drained out of our basement, and everything that could be saved or salvaged has been kept dry and safe. And everything that could not be kept has been discarded, and in the case of two chairs taken apart by chopping axe!

that was fun! Now as it turns out, we did have to replace our entire water heater so we could take hot showers again, and it cost us around $700 and most of it was just for installing it too!

But now we're drying out the remains of our walls and floor so mold won't set in and once that's done (and it should only take three days) Then all we have to do is find a way to repair/replace our A/C and furnace and we'll be back to normal again!

No a minor side note I finally got around to burying my second pet snake today as well. Normally you would think burying a pet would be a somber occasion but, to my surprise I smiled the whole time, because all I thought about were the good times. That and I got to use the bottle of Bobcat urine we had stashed in our garage.

tempestwheel · **Reply #19 on:** June 21, 2011, 01:33:34 AM

Quote from: The Great Valley Guardian,Jun 21 2011 on 12:31 AM

But now we're drying out the remains of our walls and floor so mold won't set in and once that's done (and it should only take three days) Then all we have to do is find a way to repair/replace our A/C and furnace and we'll be back to normal again!

Yeah..I recently had a potential mold problem at my house a few months ago, I heard how bad those things can get.

I hope you're able to recover from everything that happened, GVG