Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Anyone have an ark I can borrow?

Well...I certainly won't be going anywhere today. This is my parking lot right now. The little grey car on the bottom right is mine. When I tried to go out to move it, the minute I stepped into the "shallow" calf deep water, there was a huge lightening strike in the neighborhood on the other side of the white house and I high-tailed it back inside. Just before that, I did manage to get our other car moved (my fiance is out of town and on a plane at the moment, so he has no idea this is happening). It was parked just across the way from my grey car. The drag of the water as I tried to cross through the knee deep water was so much that it destroyed my flipflops as I tried to race across in the pouring rain. Unfortunately, by the time I had braved up enough to go out into the storm, I was too late to keep our car from flooding. After I got the car pulled up onto higher ground, I looked back to realize the back floorboard was so flooded that the water was up to the bottom of the seat and there were our suede bottomed dance shoes, floating around in their bags. My leather Colonial era reproductions shoes were submerged and caught beneath some other floating debri. All shoes are now draining in the tub and the car is draining into the yard.

As I type this, though the rain has finally stopped, the water is still so high that it has just shorted the car alarm on someone's car and it is blaring right outside my window. In fact, I think the water may be rising, as the horn is starting to sound a bit muffled.

As I tried for the third time to take the dog out for his morning walk, since he really needed to go, he realized that there was just no where to go and he wasn't keen to stand in the rain and pee on a shrub by the door. He wanted a walk...there's just nowhere to go. I also ran into our assistant office manager, who lives on the sublevel floor of my building, as he watched the water rise. He's an older gentleman and his car is just to the left of the ones in this picture. There was nothing we could do to get to his car or to move it. According to this gentleman, he's not seen it so bad here before, but the last time it got close was in 1997, which totalled 24 apartments. Then, it wasn't the rains that got to the apartments, it was the residual flooding after the drainage system filled. The rain has now stopped, but there is no hint what-so-ever that the water will go down anytime soon.

Several hours later:

Still helping neighbors move cars to higher ground, which is running out. The drains just aren't cutting it. There is another, bigger storm on the way in an hour or so. Purple on the radar. This is one hell of a day.

5 comments:

  1. Wow, that is intense. Does it at least mean you get more sewing time in?

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  2. I work from home doing alterations and such, so even if everyone else in the city can't get to work, I'm still here. Unfortunately, with all the crazy lightening and such, attaching myself to any electrical device or sitting in front of windows doesn't really seem like a good idea, so I got very little work done today. Maybe now that the lightening has stopped.

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  3. Oh nooooo! I live on an island, and our home has a canal on 2 sides. I can totally relate to water difficulties. We've had our share of water damage. So sorry.

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  4. I'm going to get you your own personal row boat for your wedding.

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  5. I've never experienced that kind of flooding --- I'm so sorry to hear about it. Hopefully things have calmed down now.

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