The Christmas Morning Flood

If you notice, I have not been keeping very well with my blogging: there was sort of surprise crisis that popped up during the holidays!

Every Christmas Eve, my family celebrates with my dad's side at my grandmother's house (posted below). It is one of my favorite traditions. We normally return home around 1am or so, by the time we help clean up from the big celebration. Doug and I were exhausted for some reason, so we scampered upstairs and our parents set our gifts under the tree for the next morning. One of the other amusing traditions my family has involves my dad wrapping and stowing my mom's gifts in our basement. He spends a good 2 hours down there wrapping his gifts each year. :) While its normally an inconvenience to us, let's say we are so glad Dad chooses to do this every year.

While Doug and I are changing into our PJs and brushing our teeth, I start to hear shouts from downstairs. Hmm, seems a little hostile for Christmas morning at 1:15am, don't you think? Still in my dress clothes, I ran downstairs and my mom is shouting something about water. I turn the corner and she's in the basement stairwell. What the heck?

"We have WATER!!!"

Hmm, ok mom. I know that, in fact- I just used some to brush my teeth.

I ambled down the stairs expecting to see a puddle below where our main level bathroom is. Oh, was I immediately stunned at what I saw.

Ok, I do know there is a lot going on in this picture. But can you see the reflection on our carpeting? That would be 2+ inches of standing water.

I ran upstairs and whipped off my dress pants and threw on shorts. I started shouting for my brother - his Mac was sitting on the floor! I think all I got out was, "We have a flood in the basement. Get your computer!" Doug FLEW out of his room, actually body slamming me into the wall, and ran straight to his computer. For about 30 minutes we worked to get everything valuable off the ground onto tables.

Between Doug's valuable computer equipment, we also had a lot of valuable Peanuts collectables to quickly save from rising water. It's hard to see, but the water is up to Doug's ankle in this picture!

My mom ran upstairs to make appropriate calls about the situation. Hold the phone. It's CHRISTMAS EVE? Who is going to help us? That was a question none of us wanted to dwell on, so we sent her up anyway. She made the calls to the insurance company and plumbers in the area. While she was working on that, Dad was searching for an answer to why this was happening. Ah ha, found it:

This is our sump pump and its cover - currently floating above the pump cavity. Our sump pump failed!

While that sucks pretty bad, we do have another drain that leads straight to the sewers that should have minimized the damage! Why the heck isn't it draining the water out? My dad went over to that pump and found this:

OH lovely. That would be the outlet that our second pump WAS plugged into. As you can see here, the outlet blew - leaving our basement plugged up with water

It didn't take long to get the valuable items off the floor onto towels and furniture. Now what? My mom did not get anywhere with getting a plumber out and of course the insurance company couldnt help us on Christmas morning around 2am. At this point, Doug found our large garbage can and we bailed the water out of the basement for the next 5 hours.

Have you ever done that? Let me tell you something - it'll make you feel like your body is on fire. I spent the time filling the garbage can with buckets full of water, then helping hauling it up the stairs, and pouring it out our front door. For. Five. Hours. Keeping in mind we had all been awake since 9am the previous day. Doug and I created a pretty good team, but we were having trouble keeping up with the water levels. It was warm enough that the precipitation coming down from the sky was rain - and the snow was melting at the same time!

I'd like to believe that we were all too tired to think of this; but finally someone had the idea of plugging the second pump into an extension cord and put it into an outlet that worked. We were initially afraid that the whole pump blew, but we were JOYFUL to learn that the pump still worked. We wired it across the room and watched it suck up a majority of the standing water in the room. From there, Doug and I swept the water out of the carpet into the working drain, and hauling the water from the sump pump cavity over there as well.

This is one corner of the basement indicating how high the water actually got!

Around 5am, my body was starting to give out. The buckets of water suddenly started to weigh hundreds of pounds and my legs were starting to burn. My parents begged Doug and I to stop and go to bed. Ok, something you need to know about me:

I NEED A PLAN!

I went upstairs and booted up the computer. I was going to find a bloody plumber, no matter what! We just couldn't keep up with the rain, and my parents could barely function anymore. After 5 unsuccessful calls, one company picked up their phone. After getting the logistics out of the way, the man said, "Ok, I'll have my guy out there in less than an hour, is that ok?"

Is that ok? OH MY GOSH I LOVE YOU! The man, Mike, laughed and said he was glad they could help. I shared the news with my family, who were very skeptical that anyone would actually come. I sat with the phone, ready to call EXACTLY an hour after I hung up with Mike to give him a piece of my mind if no one showed up.

Luckily, the owner of the company, Terry, rang our doorbell 40 minutes later. I could have hugged him! With 30 minutes of work, he replaced our failed sump pump and our other pump and the pump cavity emptied immediately! If only we could have found a plumber earlier in the night! Regardless, the four of us stood there exhausted and speechless when he left. Now what?

Well, I CAN tell you that we all ended up going to bed around 7am that morning. Doug and I needed showers after all the gross water we stood in and lifted all night. We decided that we would get up around noon to open gifts and figure out what our next step was in this nightmare. Good enough for me! I could hardly keep my eyes open!

As we settled into our beds, my dad said, "Merry Christmas, everyone."

Merry Christmas indeed! Keep an eye out for what else we learned and what we had to do next!