Okay, I finally feel like I can tell this story.
On New Years' Eve, I had a bit of a surprise. The short story is: my house and most of what I owned was destroyed in a flood. Here's a longer version, with illustrations:
So, it's December 31, 2005. And at about 4:00 a.m., my cat jumped off my bed. I know this because I was woken up by the loud splash she made when she landed on the floor. She then leaped straight back onto the bed, yowling, and her cold wet feet were pretty non-standard. "Wha'?! What?! What's . . . ?!" is kind of what I remember thinking, since usually when my cat jumps off the bed, there's no "splash!" sound effect.
The water was about shin deep already. It was to my waist within about 20-30 minutes. Floods are scary-fast. Now I know why so many people were killed or stranded by Katrina and other flooding events.
I waded to my landlord's place (he lives one house away) and banged on his bedroom window to wake him and his wife. The landlord, Jonathan, yelled "What? Who the @#$%?!", before stepping onto his own flooded floor. Then he ran outside and asked me, "What do I do?"
Because I know? "I'd get your family upstairs, first, I guess," I said.
So he went back inside and moved his wife and kids upstairs, as his house had begun flooding, too. I went back to my own house to try to elevate what I could, before the water got so high that we all freaked out and evacuated to higher ground.
Here's a bucolic shot of my house and my 3/4 cat, Tatu, before the flood:
and here's a shot of the same area as the waters rose (in the end, the water stopped about ten inches above the wood-stove, there, just below the window):
and here's the dining room, also still as the water rises. I'd stacked books on the table there to try to save them, but the water rose so fast and so high that everything from about four feet down was destroyed, in the end:
Here's me in the house about a month before all that crazy rain:
and the same general area at about 4:45 a.m. on New Years' Eve:
The water looks still, but it was actually flowing through the house, quite powerfully. About 85% of what I own (including my car!) was destroyed (or floated away -- as I was frantically getting my animals out and trying to elevate things, a table and a couple chairs washed out of the house, and a couple of somebody else's patio chairs floated in. We never did find out who those chairs belonged to . . .). I had just done laundry, so most of my clothes were folded in a laundry basket on the floor, so were all soaked through by muddy water or were washed away. The computer sat on the floor, of course; somebody tell me why we call them "desktops" when every "desktop" I've ever seen has, in fact, sat under the desk.
Every piece of furniture had to be discarded. So at least I have all new stuff! I lost hundreds of books (remember, the water got to a little over four feet, so pretty much everything at four feet or below was just destroyed). I also lost, perhaps most painfully, a half-set of uilleann pipes and several flutes and whistles. Some of them were just not in the house anymore when we were doing recovery, so if anyone is boating in the Pacific and finds some instruments, let me know. They might be mine!
Here's what happened to my furniture (you can even see the Christmas tree up top):
and here's what was left of my walls, insulation, more furniture, etc.:
When it became obvious that the waters were going to continue to rise (for some reason I kept expecting that the flood would just stop, with each inch), I went around the neighborhood with my landlord, and we woke everyone (it turns out that people can remain asleep even with a foot or more of water in their house!). We helped carry our neighbors' kids to higher ground, and assisted our elderly neighbors up the hill, too, where very generous people -- strangers, even -- took folks in so they could wash up and be dry and warm for a while.
While carrying a young girl called Maddie up the hill, my right foot was crushed by part of a porch that had floated from someone's house and that lurked invisible under the waters (the water was muddy, plus it was dark). I shook it off at the time, but several bones were broken, and an infection set in on the right half of the foot through the cuts there. I almost lost my big toe, but eventually the infection came under control. The toenail that's growing back there is all wonky-looking, though (I'll spare you any photos!). The doctor at the ER yanked the toenail off without any anesthetic or anything, because he thought it was ready to just fall off. Took him three tries. I'm here to tell you that having a guy insert a forceps under your toenail and then trying to rip it off hurts. Also, it costs about $1300 for that procedure, according to the bill I later got. If anyone needs a toenail torn off, without anesthetic, I'll totally do it for, like, half that. Just call me.
And get this: later, as I was trudging up the hill with my suitcase (a very kind neighbor let me use her house and phone until I could get a rental car set up and contact my parents), a pickup truck from the fire department pulled up and the fireman got out and asked me to escort his passenger -- a woman he'd picked up from some flooded corner -- across a footbridge and to her employer's home. And then he just drove away, before I'd even really answered. Alejandra's job is taking care of an elderly invalid. So Alejandra follows me to my neighbor's house, where I drop off my stuff, and then we find an unflooded route to her employer's house, which turns out to be like three-quarters of a mile away -- and remember, my foot is all bloody and damaged, so I'm limping -- and is luckily unflooded, and then Alejandra asks me to come in to be sure everything's okay.
And everything is, except that the woman she takes care of weighs something near 500 pounds, and the power's out, so we have to wrestle this poor lady out of bed and into her wheelchair because the power lift can't work without electricity. While we're doing this Alejandra and I are talking in a mix of her poor English and my poor Spanish, and I learn that she has a four-year old daughter at home, she's been here from Mexico for two years, and that Alejandra is diabetic and has high blood pressure. She's also very sweet and working hard, even coming to her job on her day off today because she was worried for her employer. And then I have to walk back to my neighbor's house, and of course it had started raining again. So I arrive soaked through, and then spend an eternity on the phone talking to insurers and arranging for a car, etc.
And it turns out if you don't have flood insurance specifically (I didn't, because my house is not in a "flood plain"), that you're not covered. At all. The car was covered, though, so I have a brand-new hybrid Civic to replace the one that was destroyed. But for the rest, I got a very small check and an offer for "used clothing or undergarments" from FEMA. Uh, no thanks on the used underwear.
Three weeks after this flood, I was laid off when the company I work for was acquired by a larger one. I got one letter thanking me for making the company so successful and informing me that, because of this success, we were being purchased by a larger East Coast company, and a separate letter letting me know that my services, along with those of most of my employees, would no longer be required. Ugh. I'm still job-hunting. But I do suddenly have a different perspective on things, and am unable now to take much for granted (in fact, I’m probably over-wary, if anything).
