“Was it your basement that flooded?”I’ve told a lot of people about the water that got into our home last Thursday evening. After expressing their concerns for our safety, it was the people north of the Line, Yankees, who invariably asked that question.
I gently told them that in Houston, most homes came without basements, us being built so low to the ground and all. Most folks found that idea more shocking than our flooded house. “No basement? Really?”
Okay: long story short. Two weeks ago, we had just finished with having the downstairs level of the house painted. (Great paint job, BTW.) Thanks to a heavy workload, it took us that long to get moved back into all our ground-floor rooms.
Thursday, 11 May, it rained so hard here that we had some water come into the home...just enough so that it’s going to be a real mess for another three or four weeks. The Servpro disaster recovery people arrived on Friday afternoon. Their packers came in on Saturday morning to remove stuff from the back room.
Then it was chainsaws and plaster dust everywhere. Enough dehumidifying horsepower to dry out a large stock pond. And boxes and boxes of stuff everywhere. Thank goodness for insurance, which we took out 20 months ago, between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It’s the true National Flood Insurance item, separate from our homeowner’s policy. Just in case.
“The nighttime storms flooded some neighborhood streets and freeway feeder roads across the Houston area. More than five inches of rain fell Thursday night in the Southside Place subdivision, on Houston’s west side,” the Houston Chronicle reported. One TV station announced that nine inches fell in our area of Spring Branch in just about four hours.
Be reassured. (Heck, we’re reassured.) Our house does NOT look anything like the photo above. Still, we had our moments last Thursday evening and Friday morning.
We’re truly looking forward to hurricane season. Yes indeed. It starts in 16 days.
1 comment:
Here’s a flood story for you. When I bought my house 8 years ago, I put a lot of boxes in the cellar until I could get around to unpacking.
I have a sump pump in the basement (flood zone rule number one). Hurricane Floyd - 1999 Atlantic hurricane season - moved through. The original sump pump that came with the house failed.
I came home from work to find water up over the first step in the basement. My boxes were floating around in it. My boyfriend went out to HmDpt at 9 PM, bought a new sump pump, and installed it that night, in water a foot deep! I saved some stuff, a lot had to be thrown out. Since then, I never underestimate the power of water.
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