I think we see a silver lining...it's pretty faint still...

Friday night Tenisha's mom came down to play with Tyson so we could work together on demolition downstairs. Jason did a lot of tearing up of carpet, padding and linoleum yesterday by himself while Tenisha had the job of playing with Tyson and making important phone calls. One of those calls was to the insurance company. Of course we don't have flood insurance, we're not in a flood zone!!! Our car, the Honda, was a bit soggy. There was standing water in it. The outside flood line was a bit higher than what came in the house and it was too high to move the car once we realized how high it was actually getting...so in talking with the insurance we figured out the engine had been submerged (wouldn't start) and we are covered for flood damage!!! yay! We have to wait til next week to talk with the adjuster...we're sort of preparing for it to be a total loss, we'll see..It will be sad to see her go, when we are on road trips we get 32-34 mpg. Is there any other car that comes close to that for $2,000? Doubt it.

Today we tore up the 'snap together laminate', which we were told by a couple of people (flood specialist and Home Depot flooring specialist) that it probably wouldn't be salvagable. Well, we started unsnaping it and lo and behold it was laid on plastic on top of the concrete, just snapped together and a little wet. The backing of it was waterproof, not like the felt we saw at the store! We took it apart, wiped it down and set it out to dry. A few hours later it was dry and looking great!! We probably saved at least 90% of it. Hopefully that room will go back together really easily.

Then...our neighbor had a ton of family over helping them clear out their basement (they've lived here 30 years!!!) and asked to take our load to the dump for us and didn't want us to even pay the dump fee! That was such a surprise as we were talking about how we were going to do that. All of the flooring we had removed at that point fit into one pickup and he was more than willing to do it! What a blessing!!

We found out from the same neighbor the rest of the water story. As the water was rising we and they called about it and let the city know there was a problem. A person came by to check it out and said the culvert wasn't blocked it was just too much water to handle. This visit happened before the water was in our houses. Apparently at 4:00 am they came back and CLEARED a BLOCKAGE in the culvert and by 6:00 am when we got up all the water was gone. So apparently this was preventable. Our neighbors were sure it was a blockage as it happened 3 years ago but it was taken care of right away and didn't get nearly this bad. A little water in the park was all. So our houses plus a few more at the other end of the creek were the unlucky receipients of a flood. Should the city be responsible for this? We're wondering...

Well that's all I can think of for now..we have a dehumidifier downstairs chugging away...makes it dehydrating working down there but it sure is drying everything up nicely. We will talk to a flood repair service on Monday to get an idea of what all needs to be done.

We'll keep you posted! :O)