h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, I left work early (3:30) on account of a huge thunderstorm and tornado sightings (I take an elevated train). After many delays, I arrived home at around 6:00, to find that the trap door in the roof had not been locked the last time someone went out, and all of our stuff on the back porch has been ruined. Exercise equipment, vacuum cleaner, a basket of laundry, the old computer... hopefully my stuffed animals in their plastic trash bags will be OK; I may wind up pitching two wood cocktail tables, too.

Landlord called to say he was on his way and he'd get up there to close it. In the meantime, another thunder shower has come through and now water is seeping into my kitchen from under the door.

I'm feeling a little

It never rains but it pours, eh? Sorry. I find extreme weather quite exciting until it starts wrecking my stuff Sounds like a bloody nightmare.

We had a month's worth of rain in two hours on Monday. The hotel is quite old, so in one part it actually came through two floors. Meanwhile, in the town centre, all the manhole covers came up and parts of the road got lifted and broken. I have little sympathy for the shopkeepers, though; the main street is built over a river, meaning their cellars get flooded every six months. Yet they insist on filling them with books and complaining to the council when the books get soaked. I reckon it's all copies that will never sell, conveniently stored there to claim insurance...

Ewww bummer, PC.

Just as well you got home early.

Is there no way to reach the trapdoor yourselves, or have you got to wait for the landlord?

get your biggest bathtowel and jam it under the kitchen door.(well it might help)

commiserations and s

Eek! That was a nasty day you had!

The trap door blew off and landed on the neighbors' roof.

Landlord placed a piece of fitted cementboard into the hole where the trap door would go, and weighted it down with 50 lbs of dumbbells and our bowling balls.

Everything out there is drenched. I believe I'm taking tomorrow off to survey the damage and clean up a bit. My boss said go ahead and stay home if I need to. He's not in tomorrow anyway so he won't need me.

Argh. Sometimes you just feel so defeated, you know? But I am one of those people who for some reason can keep it together in a crisis. I did call the landlord and tell him that This Is An Emergency... so he knew to come home straight away.

Unfortunately, besides the aforementioned stuff, I think all of K's old articles from his student newspaper are in one of the boxes that got wet.

Projects for the near future include purchasing plastic storage bins for everything out there that isn't a flower pot, and getting renter's insurance. We, of course, are not insured at the mo, even though I've meant to get it for ages.

Weeyow! Poor you.

Oh ye gods!

Try & haul whatever you can inside & separate all the paper stuff, lay it out flat, devote a room to it if necessary. Buy loads of plain white kitchen towel to sponge up the worst. It will take a couple of days, but you can, with patient hard work, save flood damaged printed matter.

Gaggh, honestly, sometimes you just get to think "oh why the hell do i bother," don't you?

Hiss. Spit. Snarl.

(It's constant rain here also, but that's maybe just as well since i've decided not to bother watering my plants anymore: why grow things just for folks to steal them?)

Bah. Better Mus Come.

zdt

So sorry to hear that. I once lost half of my belongings when the cellar where they were stored was flooded, so I know just how you feel.

Some advice:

One time, I was making an insurance claim - not for weather damage, but for burglary. I phoned the police station to get a crime number for the paperwork. The police officer told me:
"Make sure you don't under claim"

OK - so the officer on duty that day just happened to be my brother-in-law. Even so!

>>We, of course, are not insured at the mo

Oops. I didn't see that bit. I won't have made you feel any better - a bit like when the IT department says 'Did you save your work?'

Bummer!

Well, you didn't make me feel any worse.

I'm optimistic that since most of the water seemed to come straight down, and the porch slopes slightly toward the stairs, that cleanup won't be too awful.

I'll definitely be spreading papers all over the kitchen table to dry today.

Oh, Bel, that is so awful that you lost so much in that basement flood. I mean, I know it's just "stuff", even if valuable and/or sentimental, but losing *half* of your stuff in one go... how horrible that would feel.

I'm glad no one was hurt by that flying thing. It's about half the size of a regular old wooden door, and about the same weight. If that had hit someone, that would've been Really Bad.

*Note to self: take out renter's insurance policy ASAP. If I actualy have it there's no chance I'll ever need it.

Skanky, your booksellers sound like people in the neighborhood I grew up in. We used to live right off the Des Plaines River and basements would flood (and sewers back up) every time it rained. My poor old dad gave up trying to use the basement as anything than a dumping ground and laundry room. But a lot of people would keep fixing theirs up, decorating-wise anyway, and then gripe about all the damage when they flooded again.

We're near-ish to the Chicago River here, but since we're on the third floor, if it ever floods this high, we'll have far more to worry about than our stuff.

Some of the big old ash trees on my block fared rather badly yesterday- two of them are about split in half, which probably means they'll have to come down completely.

I have a spare sponge here, if that's of any use... You have my sympathy, which is probably about as useful.

We were flooded once when the hot water service in the roofspace burst. We lost a lot of papers and things, but the abiding memory is of the cat treading water in the laundry. She was remarkably calm about it.

That really isn't funny... but it kind of is.

Sympathy's never useless. Though I'm not sure reassuring it is to know that I know so many people who've been through the same sort of thing. I'd like to think these things are rare flukes.

Fortunately, it's been sunny and cooler today, so things have receded a bit (in the back porch anyway) and the storms they've forecast haven't come through yet. Much of the northern part of the state is underwater- they're trying to get declared as a disaster area. Thankfully, the city's in better shape, though hundreds of power lines are still down. Over 3,000 trees suffered some damage / falling branches in the city alone. We were lucky, all things considered.

I had a friend who used to live on an island - until her husband broke her ribs one time too often. It was accessible at low tide, and her cat would sometimes walk over to the mainland. If the tides were wrong and he got too hungry, he would swim back.

I managed to get flooded out (to a depth of around 2 metres in the living room) in the middle of the sodding desert, which takes some doing.

Luckily, we hadn't yet managed to buy any furniture, so were using the dogs travel crates as a table & bed. And dalmations & spaniels really enjoy swimming!

Floods are highly preferable to fires & invasions in my experience. But get insured; if "your" flood damages someone elses property, you are in deep doo-doo.

zdt

Terri, I'm sorry someone stole your plants! That's such a bummer.

PCandy, sorry to hear about the water damage. *shudder* I am so attached to all my books -- if anything ever happened to them, eek!

I know, I'm attached to my books, too. Silly as it is to be attached to "things", I'm sure most people are, to some degree.

Nothing inside the actual living spaces was damaged. A couple of rugs got a little wet but they're OK now. And the floor out on that porch needed a good washing anyway.

I'm lucky that I live high enough up not to worry about flooding too often- and that the trees in front probably wouldn't damage any of the windows if they broke. I feel bad for people up in the suburbs who have had to evacuate.

Yes, it is silly to be attached to 'things', but it's also completely normal. We all do it. *glances around room, looking at favorite things* I'm told that monks sometimes manage to get over this, but even then I bet they have favourite rosary beads and so forth...

Or some mind-altering drug, or something. It's not just that it's cost any of us a fortune to replace the stuff, and it's not all the sentimental value. I think it's the feeling associated with being out of control, being vulnerable, something like that.

Plus I just absolutely hate filth.

Here's hoping none of you lot ever have to (or again, for Terri, Bel and others who already have) face that kind of loss and sense of whatever.