I Fucking Hate Rain

Another day, another reason not to blog.

Rain, tons of it.

The two posts I put on CR yesterday and today follow.

Yesterday's Post:

"So Saturday morning is started to rain. It kept raining all day. Then about 9pm it REALLY started to rain...A LOT. And it didn't stop.

We probably got about 1-2 inches from 9am to 9pm and 6-7 inches from 9pm-3am. Included in that was more than 3 inches in a one hour stretch.

Large parts of the city were flooded badly. It is not like you see on TV where people are on their roof. But in my town of 25,000 and in our general area (North Eastern South Dakota) there are several thousand homes destroyed and millions upon millions of dollars in damages.

I was at a friends 30th birthday party when my dad called to say my basement was starting to flood (he was staying the night). He also told me my brothers car had stalled a half hour ago and he had no idea when it was going to get towed out.

My wife and I left the party with the intentions of going home but when we saw how bad the streets were (3-5 feet deep in many places) and how many cars were stalled (literally hundreds) we decided to go get my brother. It never takes more than 15 minutes to get anywhere in our city. It is small and traffic is never that bad. It took me 45 minutes to get to my brother in my 4 wheel drive Chevy Tahoe. There were a number of times I was pushing water with my bumper. There were other times I was pushing it with my grill.

Really.

When I finally got to him, tow rope in hand, the water was almost waist deep (I'm 5' 8'' tall). I stripped down to my undershirt and took off my flip flops then waded over to his car. I kneeled down to feel for a tow hook. The water was fucking freezing and up to my chest. After a minute or so I gave up. We decided that maybe I could push him a couple hundred feet to dry street so I could hook the rope up easier. This was made more difficult by the 5 other stalled cars, the fact I had no shoes on, and by the trucks that came by making large waves that pushed the car a foot or more.

His car was floating.

We finally got it out of the water and towed it through two feet of water for a mile to the car dealership I work at. He has had the car (a VERY nice Acura CL) for 3 months. It is a total loss.

For my part my parents, wife, brother, and I were able to keep the water level in my basement under 2 inches. We had two sump pumps working full time and a wet vac that we would fill and haul outside and dump. I had to crawl around on my hands and knees for several hours with plumbers putty and fill little holes and cracks in the mortar between the cinder blocks that comprise my basement walls.

And then the sewer backed up.

I had people's shit floating in a yellow soup in my basement. To make matters worse I could not get the water to stop flowing up through my floor drain. After several hours I got a plug to stay and I was able to jam a rubber exercise mat into the shitter to plug that (I set my bowling ball on top of it to keep the water pressure from forcing the plug out).

I was awake for almost exactly 24 hours before I got some sleep. When I got up on Sunday after about 4 hours of rest the water was still coming in big time. I relieved my dad who had only slept about 2 hours and alternated between pumping water and hauling shit from my basement.

Later in the day my brother returned and a friend came over and we were able to remove my furniture and carpet. Some of the furniture is ok, the carpet is not.

I was able to get about 6 hours of sleep last night and things are looking up. I came into work for a few hours to take care of some stuff but I am leaving soon so I can rip down my walls that are wrecked and getting moldy already.

My insurance policy won't cover any of this. My back is fucked up. My left shoulder feels like there is knife in it. I am tired. I have a cut on my toe (long story) which sat in sewage for 15 straight hours while I worked (now I need a tetanus shot). I have not seen my daughter in 2 days (she is staying with family).

Did I mention that I am one of the lucky ones?

Fellow CR member mjrnt (real name: Matt) is a good friend of mine. He lives about 10 blocks north of me. His house in on a very small island. The rest of town is mostly drained but his street is under 4 to 5 feet of water. When you look down it the water starts at the doorstep of the homes on the south side of the street and stretches to the door step of the homes on the north side of the street. He has several feet of water in his, unlike mine, fully finished and furnished basement.

It is destroyed.

And his insurance won't cover it either.

We are talking over $50k in damages (compared to my $2,000-$3,000).

Did I mention that the water level is still rising?

I have another friend in a small town 20 miles south of here who had a wall in his basement give way. When he opens the door to the basement all he sees is water. He had a fuel oil (diesel used to run his furnace) tank down there and it leaked into the water. Now he can't pump into the street. His house is pretty much destroyed as it will cost more to fix the basement that the home is worth.

His insurance won't cover it either.

Look, I understand this is not exactly New Orleans. I still have a house and a place to work. My family and friends are safe. But please excuse me when I say that this is the worst thing that I have ever seen. Until you see it in person and can see how this is affecting people's lives there is no way to truly understand the enormity of it all.

I am sorry this is such a long post. Please understand that I am not looking for sympathy. I just needed some place to vent. My head feels like it is going to explode and my body feels like it is going to crumble. It just plain feels good to put this on virtual paper.

As I type this, with God as my witness, I am sitting at work at my desk with tears running down my cheeks. I am not sure what to say or do at this point. All I can do is cry."

Today's Post:

"Thanks for the kind words guys, it means a lot.

Here is a link to a page with thumbnails of our town taken by the local newspaper:

http://www.aberdeennews.com/ap...Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=1

When you click on a pic it takes several seconds to pop up (the entire page reloads) so be patient.

If you look at the very first one the red car on the right side of the pic is my brother's (the one in the story that I pushed out). It was taken a while before I got there. I know this because you can still see the tops of the wheels!

A lot of the pics aren't even of the worst areas. I plan on taking a ton of phots of mjrnt's neighborhood this evening since I finally have my house cleaned up.

Here is a link to the papers home page:

http://www.aberdeennews.com

At the top there is some links to video footage of the mess. Check the aerial video out, it is pretty amazing. Again, please be patient with the links, the page is probably getting bombarded by locals.

Some of the video links don't alwasy work. The first one does and if you watch it at the 3:10 mark where the words "North Dakota St. Area" pop up and at the 4:25 mark where it says "North State Street" you will see the neighborhood where mjrnt lives.

He is smack in the middle of it.

The water level is actually rising there and they expect it won't go down until Friday at the earliest.

At my house the water is still seeping in but it no longer requires constant attention. I can use my toilet and shower again and hope to be able to do laundry in the next few days. We worked until midnight or so last night at which time I got my first good nights sleep since Friday.

Tonight we are going to a friends house to haul the carpet and furniture from his basement and cut the damaged sheetrock out before the black mold starts to grow.

I talked to my brother-in-law who is a fireman in town and he said they were out all night on Saturday. Apparently there were dozens of electrical fires in peoples basements. He also told me that they carried dozens of elderly people from their basements through chest deep water. There were spots in town that the only way they could rescue was by boat. A local marina loaned several boats to city to aid in this effort.

My next door neighbor is a police officer and he also was hard at work on Saturday. They pulled a guy over and gave him a DUI after he hit a section of 2 foot deep water at about 40 MPH in town.

Fucking idiot.

I hope to get my computer back online this evening so I can get some hands in. I know my mind is super cluttered but I need a distraction! I will post some pics here later."

I hope to keep posting day by day with info about the progress our city is making. I plan on taking a bunch of photos tonight and will try to get them posted tomorrow.

Jeff