Virgil

As hurricanes go, I don’t think it was so terrible, at least in general. I don’t know what the winds got up to, but around here I didn’t see anything unusual. I saw some of the trees sway, but I’ve seen worse. Suffice it to say, no windows shattered. The rain was heavy. I don’t know how much we got. I took the dog out to relieve herself in the morning, or at least I tried to. It was raining very heavy; you could feel the barometric pressure squeezing down. I tried to take Brandi for a walk but once out there she wouldn’t budge…lol. I tugged on the leash and she resisted. Finally I decided to just take her in the backyard. Once we got there she refused to do anything. Finally I decided to give it up and go in. She rushed in. Dog has more sense than her master.

I thought I had gotten out of the storm lucky. We did have some minor water damage in a couple of the window corners. I guess water was able to seep in through the frame. Don’t they put flashing around there? Don’t know, but water got in and damaged the sheetrock. Nothing major. And water got in at the deck/house interface, where I had thought I sealed up so well when I had the damage last year. Hmm. Nothing ever gets fixed to satisfaction.

So at ten o’clock, with the eye of the storm just about passed over and apparent calm, I decided to walk the neighborhood to see how bad it was. I walked down to the lower elevation and really found nothing. No trees were down, just twig sized branches, leaves, acorns, and other tree bits. Drainage sewers were overwhelmed down the hill, with some pooling out into the streets. Again, nothing unusual; I’ve seen worse. Later I did see about four trees down around my mother’s neighborhood.

When I got back home I started weighing how I should spend the day. Then I decided to check the basement. I had forgotten about the risk of flooding. It’s darkish down there until you take a couple of steps to the light switch. I didn’t need to go that far to let out an “oh sh*t.” As soon as I put my left foot down to the floor I felt it wet, up to my ankle wet. Oh sh*t. Yep, flooded, ankle high. I put the light on, took a couple of steps, and let out a few sailor words. I didn’t think it was going to happen. I thought it would at worse get a splotch of water to a localized spot. So there went plans for a pleasant Sunday.

Plan, what’s the plan? I had to assess the situation. Hey I am a project manager. I went up to put on my duck shoes. Couldn’t find them, or I didn’t spend much time looking for them. My eyes zeroed in on my winter snow boots. Heck, that’ll do. So here’s an image of me you can carry throughout the rest of this crazy day: me in a casual short sleeved shirt, shorts, insulated winter boots calf high with no socks. Hey it worked.

Alright the assessment was bad. The basement is not a living space for us, but we do use it for lots of storage, especially my books. I did a while back try to elevate everything off the floor and put most of my books in plastic containers, so most of them were spared. But there was some old furniture and stuff that was ruined, not to mention the carpet and walls. So I had to drain out all that water. My carpet cleaner machine is great at vacuuming up water, but I had lent that to my mother. But then I remembered I had bought this great little wet vac that fit over a five gallon bucket. So I grabbed that and started vacuuming. It worked great; among the best twenty bucks I ever spent and it was a pure impulse buy.

Sure it vacuumed great, and it filled the bucket to about four gallons high, but then I had to carry that bucket out. My basement is two half flights down (one full flight but you have to make a turn), then out the back door and down four steps to the ground, carrying the bucket. I dumped about four bucket full’s into what used to be my garden bed. Then I realized I was creating a pool, and wouldn’t the water eventually find its way back into the basement? Sigh. So on top of walking the two half flights and down to the ground I decided I needed to walk the bucket around the house to the front street to dump it. At least I figured I might as well get a workout out of it. How much could that bucket weigh? Fifteen to twenty pounds? I just looked up what a gallon of water weighs. One gallon weighs 8.35 pounds. Holy smoke, that’s almost thirty-three and a half pounds (over 15 kg). That was a workout.

So I did that for about ten bucket full’s, when a couple of my neighbors come out. The two houses on my left had the same exact problem, a flooded basement ankle high. The neighbor on my immediate left was only house-sitting for the real owner, so he had no intention of cleaning up, and he disappeared. But I get talking to my neighbor over and showed him what I was doing. I think he smirked. He told me he’s trying to get a pump, called all the stores and they were either closed because of the hurricane or all the pumps sold out. Yeah, they would be with this weather.

So I went back to vacuuming, climbing the stairs, out the back, and then around to the street. I’ve got the process down now. I’m doing a complete cycle in four minutes, that’s a gallon per minute I’m thinking. Not bad, but I’m not seeing much progress. After five more lugs I’m feeling it and wondering if I could keep up the pace. Damn it, I knew I should have gone to the gym more often. And then I see my neighbor again and he says he’s got a pump! What? Where did he get that? I didn’t ask. But he needs another hose to hook drain the water out. Ok, I give him mine and he promises that after he’s done he’ll lend it to me. Great.

So I quit. What the hell, I was killing myself. I can now see the water spitting out of my hose from my neighbor’s house while I’m lugging what I at the time thought was twenty pounds of water. I’m thinking shortly that hose will be spewing water from my basement. An hour goes by and he’s still not finished. I call my insurance to file a claim and they tell me they’ll cover a flood damage service. I find some in the phone book, call around and they’re booked solid but they’ll call me back. Yeah. Then my wife tells me her mother might have a pump herself. So I race over and borrow it. But it’s small, unbelievably small, fits in the palm of my hand. It’s got an inlet nozzle and an outlet nozzle and you have to hook up a hose to each. So I borrow my mother-in-law’s hose, go to my mother and grab her hose, and spent another hour trying to hook this little thing up. Do you think it worked? Nope. This little thing couldn’t handle a twenty-five foot hose on one side and another twenty-five foot hose on the other. It was winding, but nothing was coming out. I don’t think this thing could handle a spill of a glass of milk.

So I resolved myself to be a beast of burden again: vacuum, up the flight, down the four steps, and around the house. After of few more of those, the neighbor comes by again and he tells me he’s got another pump, an even bigger one. Where the hell—again I didn’t ask, but more importantly he can now lend me the little one. He also shows me the process he and his uncle have worked out: take a plastic garbage can, place the pump inside, vacuum water off the floor and dump in it in the can. A full water level makes the pump continuously work. Hmm, efficiency.

And that’s what I do. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing that. It really worked well. I have to get one of those pumps. What’s left is a soggy carpet. It’ll have to come up, but I’ll have to remove everything from the basement first. I was too tired to do anything more. What a day.