Flooded out

We have been very busy dealing with the wrath of a flood. Thursday July 22nd the Milwaukee area received around 7 inches of rain in an hour. It wreaked havoc on the city and our home. The storm occurred during our evening commute home and was the scariest storm I have ever driven in. Navigating streets of water, sideways rain that you could not see through – I really don't wish to do that ever again. Our usual 15 minute commute took me 2 hours to complete and Lucian 3. He advised me not to get on the highway before I left, which helped a lot.

I got home around 8pm with Spencer and Claire to a house with no power. We checked on the basement, which was dry, and located the candles and flashlights. I fed Claire and waited for Lucian to arrive. We carefully raided the fridge, so as not to let too much of the cold air escape.

Around 9pm, I was putting Claire to bed and I heard Lucian yelling from the basement. Without our power, the sump pump wasn't running and it had just overflowed. I put Claire straight to bed (luckily she went right to sleep and didn't make a peep) and got down there to start moving things to the main level. We piled things on the pool table and Spencer's bed, ran furniture upstairs and into the garage. Lucian's parents came over to help and we ran the sump off a generator in Dave's truck until around 3am. We had 6-8 inches of water over the entire basement at the peak and got our power back late the following night.

When all was said and done we were able to save most of our belongings. The carpet was ripped up and hauled away and holes were drilled in the dry wall to help it dry out. We're now waiting for our insurance claims adjuster to come and access the damage. I am thinking of moving to a mountain top.

Here are a few images I found of the storm.

Clouds over downtown

A flooded street

A sink hole formed on the east side and a car fell in

Spencer's high school, a few blocks away, had water damage in over 80% of the school. The men's locker room had 6ft of standing water! They are hoping to have everything cleaned up by the start of the school year Sept. 1.