About a half an hour later that water had crept its way up almost to our deck, but our yard slopes downward so the water was like a huge pool. The water level at the back chain link fence was up to 3 feet deep and within minutes the spillover happened and it all came rushing past our house and pouring into our basement windows. The water was about12 inches rushing past the house. There were literally waterfalls coming in the windows. I put that tub there to catch the water... didn't really do much good ;-)
Soon there was almost 6 inches of water at the deepest part of the storage areas, and that's when it started seeping up through the carpet (our basement room is built on a sub-floor about 5 inches over the concrete floor).
We were up and down the stairs as fast as we could go rescuing things that mattered... that's really hard when you are panicking and every single thing feels important simply because it's yours. After about ten really hard minutes of raining and flooding in the house, it tapered off.... it sure felt longer.
Since the rain sort of took a break, we went out to check on some of our neighbors and see the insanity of it all. The road was just a rushing river and all the driveways were just feeding into it. Evan was right out in it with Todd (freezing!!). This was after it had gone down about 6 inches too.
Our garage and shed out back were seriously flooded and Todd is really worried about damage to so many of his tools. You can see the water depth by looking at Evan's bike tire.
Evan's favorite toy, his RC rock crawler, was also submerged in the shed, along with the snowblower and our new lawnmower. (We're hoping to check everything here soon since the rain has mostly stopped as of typing this at 3pm.)
At 10: 20 this was the yard, still rushing waters, but at least no more rain.
By 12:45pm this was the waterline receding. This is where it has pretty much just stayed since then as the rain is still drizzling on and off.
Todd and I spent the afternoon hauling stuff out of the basement and packing it into our tiny upstairs... our house is such a mess and will be for a while as we figure out what happens next. Apparently our insurance won't be covering anything either since it was damage caused by "run-off" not an actual "in-home flood" (like from a burst water pipe or something). So our basement carpet needs replaced and probably a few sheets of drywall around the windows, but thank God not much else happened (other than major inconvenience).
It's supposed to rain a lot here the next few days...
Extreme Home Makeover is in Erie this week too, and I keep wondering how this affected them.
Posted by Bree
