flooding

Today was a day. Luckily, I made the decision to wear scrubs and tennis shoes to work today instead of a skirt and heels. I was at work for about an hour when the storm hit. The rain was torrential, thunder and lightning like crazy. I walked out into the main hall to look out the doors, and couldn't believe what I saw! The street was gone, instead there was a river. It was covering and overflowing the curbs, and was inching it's way quickly up the sidewalk. Soon, waves of water were crashing at the doors of our building. Support Services were outside, sand bagging the doors, and cars were semi-floating, semi-driving down the streets. Vans got stuck in the middle of the road...it was mass chaos. In the stairwell, water was streaming through the exit door, down the stairs into the basement. I took some video footage, unfortunately it's not great.

From

Jason called me shortly after the rain started and said he was on his way home, because he was sure the basement was flooding. He was right. He got home and called me, and I ran out the door, through water covering my ankles to my car. I prayed that I'd get home, and it's a good thing I did! The streets were flooded. My poor little civic did such a good job driving through water halfway covering it's tires. I arrived home to a wreck. Jason had moved as much as he could up to the kitchen, but the basement was a mess. The laundry that was on the floor had gotten soaked, and faded into each other. I did my best to help get the sump pump back working (it is working now!), and try to keep the water at bay. It was gushing in out of cracks in the walls and floors, around support beams in the floor, and out of a drain in the floor that we thought was sealed, but apparently had cracked open. sigh. What a mess.

Luckily, the rain has now ceased enough for us to clean up, fill the cracks that we can, and pray that the storms coming through tonight aren't as bad.

Oh, and if you don't own a shopvac, you should definitely get one. They are great to have one hand :)