If you haven't heard, southern Wisconsin had A LOT of rain this past weekend! Unfortunately, my town was one of the ones that had some major flooding. Behind our house there is normally a very small creek 1 foot deep by 4 feet wide.
Saturday, early afternoon Josh and I were driving home from Beaver Dam and heard over the radio that we had a tornado warning and there was bad weather on the way. So we drove home and hunkered down. We got out the weather radio, flashlights, cat taxi's and turned on the tv to watch the weather report. We saw a big scary looking cloud approaching so naturally we went outside to take a look (hehe). The clouds above us were starting to swirl. I got totally freaked out, so we ran inside, put the cats in their carriers and proceeded to the basement.
Once the first round of storms were over, we came back upstairs. Wow, the creek behind our house is really filling up! It's already at the shore. Then we proceeded to watch the tv weather reports and saw there was another storm coming and a tornado was spotted in Pardeville... Scary... Oh great, it's raining again! HARD, VERY HARD, LOTS OF RAIN! Then it stopped.
This was the first sign of flooding. Josh's lovely garden that he had worked so hard on was started to fill with water.
Take a look at all the wood lining the back of the garage.
The next time we looked, the creek was now a river and started to take over our yard. It was about 4 or 5 o'clock now. I couldn't beleive how fast the water was rising. Pretty soon it was at our garage. Josh and I scrambled in trying to get as much stuff off the ground as possible. Within 5 minutes water was in the garage. I called my mom, she suggested packing some stuff in case we had to get to higher ground. That was the first moment I realized, oh my god, our house might flood! I immediately ran around frantically packing clothes, toiletries, our wedding album, photos, memorabilia of Katlyn, my grandma's ring and watch, a couple of my paintings, Josh's autographs and other mementos.
Meanwhile, down in the basement... The sewer drain backed up and started pumping water into our basement. Our poor sump pump was trying to keep up the best it could. Then we realized there was a huge gaping crack in the PVC pipe that was directing the basement water outside.
My mom called again. They are trapped in their subdivision on the west side of town. There is only one road in and out of their neighborhood and it is flooded! There are people in canoe's rowing down the street! Soon Josh's parents showed up. Luckily they said we could come stay at their house. By now the water was at the back steps. INSANE!!! Our street in the front of our house had started to flood as well because the storm sewer was full.
Josh's step-dad helped us load up our cars. We were ready to leave when we over heard a firefighter in front of our house say they were shutting the power off to our street. They told Josh to go down and cut the power. So he did and then we went to the fire department to report that we were evacuated, after that we went to Josh's parents house in the next town over. It was still pouring rain at this point and rained all through the night as well. But now with the power out, our sump pump couldn't keep running and our basement would fill with water.
Sunday morning we went back to our house the flooding had gone down a little. When we peered into the basement we saw the water had been 4 feet high, but now it had drained down to about 2 feet. The garage was drained a bit, but looked really nasty inside. All of our garbage cans were tipped over and mud and muck covered everything. Josh had tons of split wood on the backside of the garage and it was all gone! It floated away! ( See earlier picture) Our firepit also floated down river.
Soon, it started to rain (pour) and the water started to rise back up AGAIN! We quickly closed the garage to prevent everything from floating away and then there wasn't really anything left to do. At this point I just wanted to be with my mom and we had heard that the road to their house was open again, so we went over. All I could do now was cry. Josh had worked so hard on his garden and making our landscaping so beautiful and now is was all covered in yucky brown sludgy water. I just wanted everything to be back to the way it was and go home and sleep in my bed.
Seeing how much better I felt with my Mom, Josh said we could stay with her. So he went over to his parents to get our stuff. When he drove there, the water under the bridge to their town was rising fast and he knew he had to hussle. So he ran in grabbed our two suitcases and left. He got out just before bridge flooded. I was happy when he got back to my mom's, but sad that he had to leave Nala and Sadie at his mom's house. :(
Here are some more pictures of our flood...
Monday, I decided that I should go to work. We weren't sure if the water was done rising, so there wasn't really anything I could do at home. I went to work, hoping that it would keep my mind off the the flooding at home. Josh went out to get a new sump pump since ours was dead and proceeded to pump the now 4 ft of water out of the basement. (He went to 4 different stores before he finally found a place that had sump pumps in stock, everywhere else was sold out. At work I kept hearing that there were dams failing all over the place and Lake Delton in the Dells was GONE! I was trying to keep up with the reports online, but trying to complete my work as well. At 1:40 p.m. I found out they were evacuating the town where my inlaws lived and they had 20 minutes to do so. There was now only one road open to get into their town as all the others had flooded.
I immediately called Josh. He had to go get the Kitties! Our babies were still at his parents, and I couldn't fathom the thought of leaving them inside an evacuated zone! Josh wasn't picking up his phone and I was starting to panic, but I finally got ahold of him and he was driving back from Beaver Dam. He hadn't heard of the report but immediately went to save the kitties. Luckily he made it in time. We found out later that it wasn't a mandatory evacuation so people could still come and leave as they wished. He dropped the kitties off at my Mom's and then went to start sandbagging around our house.
We had heard that several dams upstream from us were on the verge of failing and if that water made it to Columbus we were scared that the water might get to the first floor of our house. But there was nothing we could do. Today we woke up and I decided I would stay close to home incase a dam broke or something. It was too nerve-wracking being at work. We went over to our house and saw that the flooded had receeded quite a bit. It was to the back of our garage now.
Since Josh pumped out the basement yesterday, it was now covered in yucky mucky slime. So today he sprayed it all down and then proceeded to scrub it with a big scrub brush and disinfecting Pine Sol. As we thought, the water heater is shot. We don't think it got to the furnace so that should still work. But we don't know about the central air.
While Josh was cleaning the basement I threw everything out of the fridge and freezer. It was kind of a pity because we had a LOT of meat in the freezer and now it's all garbage. Things had melted and stained the shelves so I cleaned all that out. Then I washed the Kitchen Floor and the Front entry way porch. When we were evacuating Saturday we were trapsing the sewer water in and out of the house so I wanted to get that all cleaned up (I even washed the baseboards). Then I vaccumed the living and dining room. I know I'll ache in the morning.
Even though we have no hot water, we were gonna move back in tonight, but we are just so tired from working all day. So we decided to move back tomorrow. We are still waiting for a claim agent to come to our house to assess the damage. They said we were a priority since our home is considered uninhabitable without hot water, but we're still waiting.
Friday morning we are supposed to leave on our trip to Door County. With this flood and everything, we were thinking of postponing it, but I think it would be good to get away from everything. So we decided we'll still go.
Josh has been keeping his own account of our flood adventure. See is stories as well as additional pictures at: www.barkingjosh.blogspot.com
Sorry for the long post :P
