The Great Flood

Good to see you, America.  How's everybody doing?

We're actually doing really well, all things considered.  As you know, we Midlanders just suffered the worst flood to hit this region since 1987, which, at that point in time, had been the worst flood on record since 1903.
The rain came on fast and hard, and most of us didn't think anything of it at first - just a heavy downpour that came in late one evening and lasted most of the night.  In the morning, however, Kris and I woke up to a weird sound coming from our house; something we had never heard before in the two weeks we had been living in our new home.  I got up immediately and looked out the window.

Outside, the sidewalks and street were underwater.  City maintenance vehicles were pumping water out of a manhole a couple houses down from ours.  Pissed off neighbors were slushing around in their rainboots and pajamas.  Whitewood was underwater.

The extent of our damage.

The sound, however, had been coming from inside the house, so I went downstairs to check on the status of our new, fully-finished basement.  Fortunately, as I came downstairs, I saw that everything was still miraculously dry:  the main basement area, the laundry room and bathroom, the side basement rooms, the Captain's Quarters, etc. - all bone dry.

Not so much the case with the Storage Room.

This little back valve saved our asses, rest assured.

The noise we had woken up to was coming from our Sump Pump, which kept kicking on to drain the water that was filling up its reservoir.  We can thank that miraculous apparatus for keeping our house from being damaged with flood water.  A back valve (see picture below), was also keeping water from seeping back into our house, but the pressure from the city waterlines was so intense that water was spewing from the seams (which were fully tightened in place, I couldn't budge the cap.)  The spare strips of carpet that the previous owners had laid down in the Storage Room were all soaked by the constant spraying of water, but fortunately the water spewing out was being drained back into the main drainage hole in the basement.

The main drainage hole - pre-plunging

John and Mom came over to check out the state of things for us, as we were obviously new to all of this.  After plunging the main drainage hole, the water drained and from that point forward it was just a matter of squeegeeing up the water on the cement floor and throwing away the soaked carpet strips.  We were fortunate to not have endured any real damage to our basement, especially considering that all of our neighbors on either side of us and across the street were dealing with anywhere between 6" and 6 feet of standing water in their basement.

After our Storage Room was dried out, I made an attempt to reach our old house to borrow the dehumidifier from its basement, but couldn't get through:  Waldo and Ashman streets were completely underwater and cars were being forced to turn around.  It was another few hours before I was able to make it over there successfully.

As it turns out, our neighborhood has only one waterline that drains out into Waldo Street's one, humble 12" pipe.

Seriously.  That's it.

When Waldo's pipe became backed up with floodwater and debris, our neighborhood - which constitutes some 200 houses - had nowhere to send our own congested waste.  The torrential downpour of the previous night, coupled with a soggy preceding week of on and off rain, had accumulated over 7 inches of standing bullshit, with nowhere to drain.

Then the sewage lines backed up.  And shit quite literally hit the fan.

Of course, our neighborhood wasn't the only area devastated by the flood:  many other areas in Midland were equally hit hard, especially around the river and to the west.  Parts of US-10 were completely underwater, as was much of Coleman, Mt. Pleasant, and Sanford.  Whole areas were closed off, and people got around in boats and kayaks like you always see in areas in the south - it was surreal seeing something like that happen in your own backyard.

A soggy, soggy Tridge.

Alas, we were fortunate enough to be the sole survivors of the damage on our street, and we can thank our Sump Pump and back valve for that.  Our luck definitely made us feel a little guilty, though, that we didn't share in our neighbors' misfortune:  as I drug out a few trash bags of soiled carpet to the street corner for trash pickup, I felt pretty crappy looking up and down the street and seeing folks carrying out entire bedrooms sets, entertainment centers, electronics, exercise equipment, and countless boxes upon boxes of treasures.

And then, of course, came the Scavengers.

You know the sort I'm talking about.  On 'Big Trash' pickup days, when one tosses things out like old TVs, broken or soiled furniture, etc., these Scavengers can be seen driving around in ratty, old pickup trucks looking to score on other peoples' garbage.  Usually, I find some level of amusement at this - it's like thrift-shopping for really, really crappy stuff, but to each their own.

This time, though, it seemed tasteless:  people were hauling out prized possessions that they had no previous inclination to discard mere hours before, and here these scumbags were, loading it into the backs of their trucks right in front of the previous owners.

More than once I witnessed heated verbal altercations between our neighbors and these Scavengers.

So much for groceries this weekend. . .

Why these guys were going hard at it like they were, I'll never know.  It's not like they could clean up these discarded items - they were literally soaked in human waste.  The City of Midland even ordered a halt on all scavenging, due to urgent health concerns over people hauling away items that were shit-caked and soaked with piss.

Yet still they came.  God knows why.

The damage, contained.

Anyway, our back valve and saved us from getting sewage water in our basement, so the water that had soaked our carpet strips in the Storage Room had been rain water coming from drainage pipes and nothing more.  Our neighbors, unfortunately for them, had stagnant sewage water in their basements, and what they managed to pull out from the mess was now on the street side being rummaged through by totally despicable people.

We count ourselves insanely fortunate, but are still planning on buying a generator and a backup Sump Pump in the coming weeks, just to stay on the safe side.

I'm sure many of our water-laden neighbors will be doing the same.

- Brian