Yesterday, we went to lunch with a group of friends from England who have moved back. Whilst driving down a large hill in a torrential rain, Craig noted that it might not be the best idea to be lunching at a restaurant five feet above the banks of the Patapsco River. As we were driving, I smelled a wet dirt/mud smell from outside whilst inside the car. We reached The Trolley Stop and after a quick debate, we decided to stay and eventually ordered. After being served our mains, we noticed cars turning around and not crossing the bridge over the river into Ellicott City from Catonsville. Then we noticed the level of the river was just about touching the bottom of the bridge. Then someone came into the restaurant and said that the main road back into Catonsville was closed due to flooding and Main Street Ellicott City was litruhlee a river in itself (footage made national television news). So here we are stuck except for a twisty and steep road (Oella Avenue) that we could take back. So that's what we did. Our friends followed us and we eventually got to Route 40 and they made their way home safely as did we. There was water everywhere. Rivers in yards and along the streets. I honestly have never seen it rain so much so quickly in my life.
We returned home just in time to run down to the basement to see at least two inches of water oozing out from under the new flooring system Craig had just finished laying not two days ago. Luckily it had not crested onto the floor itself; just under the subfloor which is designed for wet basements. Out came the wellies, the wet/dry shop vac and all the towels I could muster. Two hours and about 50 gallons of water later, the basement was better. It turned out that water was not leaking from the walls, but from the actual floor of the basement itself. It was litruhlee bubbling up from the floor like a spring, like a water fountain!
Once Craig spotted that, he quickly mixed up some quick bonding cement but unfortunately there was only a little bit because he had been using it whilst repairing the walls where he had just remodeled. (It worked great in those areas - no water!) So off to the hardware store. Meanwhile, I am furiously vacuuming water and dumping it out to no avail, pretty much just maintaining stasis whilst checking my phone to see if there were any school issues I needed to know about. Some buses were unable to take kids home due to road closures. And it just continues to pour and pour...
Craig returns, Evan gets in from school, Craig mixes cement with Evan and I alternating vacuum duty and the cement bonds and WORKS! Amazing that cement can bond in a pool of water. Just pure genius if you ask me (thank-you ancient Rome).
We fixed a quick dinner and then headed off to the middle school back to school night as if we didn't have enough stress.
It is still raining twelve hours later although there have been some lulls. The basement is now pretty dry thanks to my husband's fantastic ability to
and his general know-how. If I had had to do this alone, I think my strategy would have been more like
and I still would have been vacuuming throughout the night and into this morning.
The utter irony to all of this is that we reviewed our homeowner's insurance litruhlee the evening before and the telephone representative had asked Craig if he was interested in earthquake insurance because of the recent shift we experienced and FLOOD insurance. He declined both. In hindsight, we may be changing our policy.
My next door neighbor said something about the weather being like that in England. This is nothing like what we experienced although we did miss the flooding in 2007. I just can't believe how much it has rained from mid August until now. Summers are typically dry. They need some of this rain in Austin, TX where fires are raging. It is so dry and hot there this summer that bales of hay are spontaneously combusting.
All I can say is, "Frogs and/or locusts, watch out! I've got my eye on you!"
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1 comment:
Send all of that water down here NOW!! It is so crazy how backwards it all is!
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