Just talking out loud here....
So, last Thursday morning, wife and I left at 5AM for Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We get about half way down and start getting text messages that there are big storms lining up in my small home town. OK, fine. I start watching the radar on my cell phone and see that torrential rains are sitting over my home, and keep regenerating. Over and over.
Knowing I have a basement and a sump-pump, I get a bit nervous. Then, we get a call from our neighbor who is watching our cats and she says the power just went out. (It remained out for 5 hours) Now, I'm shitting bricks, because if our sump pump can't run, with heavy rains, we get lots of surface drainage that requires our sump pump to get the water out of our basement tile lines.
I'll cut all the drama.
We arrive in Gatlinburg and frantically ask a friend if they can go to our house to see if sump has been running. They tell us the town is flooded and all streets are impassible. The town got 12+ inches of rain in between 2-4 hours. Finally, they get a 4-wheel drive and plow through the water....our basement is flooded, with water literally pouring in. We had 4 foot of water, which would have been much worse had they not began pumping it out with a portable sump. (my neighbor right next to me also has a basement, and he had 9 foot of water (essentially filled it up)
Our little town has been deemed a disaster, and there is actually some relief funds going to be made available. Back to Gatlinburg. Remember, I got up at 4am, and left by 5am on Thursday. After 1 hour at our cabin, we know we have to turn around and go home. I drive, arrive back home at 4:40am, and yes, it's a disaster. We lost everything in our basement. Furnace, hot water heater, washer, dryer, 2 dehumidifiers, dozens of totes with personal items, documents, baby books, 3 crates of my CD/DVD/Blu-ray collection (no, not my prized multi-channel stuff, which I keep upstairs). Tons of clothes, blankets, pillows, christmas stuff, on and on and on.
I never went to bed on Friday and continued to clean up our basement until Friday night...then I finally crashed.
Some lower income housing is a 100% loss. Those were in a lower lying area of town, and flooded the lower floors, literally caving in walls with the flood waters. People are sleeping in the street because they don't have family, and they don't have money. What a mess.
We gutted out basement, and tomorrow the city is going to start picking up peoples damaged stuff and hauling it off.
This is just crazy. Oh, and if you're wondering, no home owners insurance does not cover any of this. Folks in Illinois don't ever even consider specific flood insurance. Which, leaves us out of luck. We'll see what the relief funds are all about. We did have a crew walking the neighborhood today, asking for a list of damaged/lost items per household.
