I've been writing this post in my head for 3 months now. While this blog started as a way to document my growing family when Emory was born, I let it fall by the wayside a couple of years ago when I realized I could more quickly and easily document things via Instagram. While I love the ease of Instagram, I miss the ability to tell more of a story on the blog. In light of our current situation, I've decided that now would be a great time to jump back into blogging, to both record more detail and also to serve as a little therapy while we are in a time of major transition.
(While this post is finally being written in January 2016, it's being time stamped with it's actual date of occurrence.)
The morning of Sunday, October 4th, Aaron was woken up by the sound of heavy rain. (Thankfully he's a light sleeper, otherwise our entire story could've ended much differently.) He took a look outside to check to see how well the backyard was draining. (We had 8 French drains and 2 sump pumps put in the backyard during renovations in 2013 because of some drainage problems.) While watching the yard for just 45 minutes, the water had gone from below our lowest deck step to above our deck entirely. Almost a 2 foot increase, in less than an hour.
Aaron woke me up, told me he thought water would soon be coming in the house, and we frantically began moving everything we could a foot off the floor all around the house. I repeatedly asked him if he really thought it would happen. I was part still asleep and part thinking he was being ridiculous. The situation was more than my brain could comprehend at 4am. We barely finished our one foot sweep of the house and got the kids from their beds into our bedroom (our master was an addition during renovations, and was built to current flood code, which was almost 4 feet higher than the rest of our house.) before the water began seeping into the house.
(In hindsight I keep wondering what would have happened had Aaron not woken up so early. The water would have risen multiple feet in the kids' rooms without us having any idea. Furniture floated and some pieces overturned. Yes, the big kids would probably have been able to jump out of bed and get to us, but Anna West would have had no way of getting out of her crib. The 'what-ifs' still make my stomach ache.)
And by 'seeping' I really mean gushing, because within two hours we were thigh deep in muddy water. We hunkered down in our bed thinking we would be stuck there for a few hours, but then the waters would start receding. We had candles and flashlights on hand. I had thrown a bunch of food in a bin to put in our room and we had filled a handful of pitchers with clean water for drinking, so we felt we'd be fine for the next few hours, no problem. We had also put our most important stuff up on the floor of the master bedroom. Scrapbooks and yearbooks. All of our expensive cable boxes and modems and remotes. A lot of our pictures that couldn't be saved if they got wet. We just knew the water wouldn't come that high. We sat listened to the sound of rushing water and floating furniture being knocked back and forth against walls.
Throughout it all, the kids amazed me in the fact that they were never scared. I'd like to say that we were trying to stay calm ourselves for their sake, but I really think Aaron and I were in such shock that we couldn't quite understand the magnitude of it all, therefore we weren't freaking out either. Boland asked multiple times if he could swim in the living room as he peaked down the stairs. Watson asked me why we had moved our couch and chairs in front of the front door, not understanding that the water had lifted all of the furniture and it was now floating around.
As we looked out of the windows, the water in the front yard was well below the water in the house, so we opened the front door to let some out. Fortunately it gave us a little more time to actually get out, but unfortunately, we watched many of the kids toys and other little items float out of the house with the rushing water. Realizing the water wasn't gonna stop for a while, and that it was rising at SUCH a rapid pace, Aaron began figuring out a way for us to get out. As he was on the phone with a neighbor up the street on higher ground trying to find another neighbor who could get a boat in the water, I was repeatedly calling 911 to see if they could get a rescue boat to us faster. I was having a hard time even getting through, and the few times I did, I was put on hold or told they would send a rescue truck, which I knew would never be able to get to us. At the same time, my dad and his neighbor were trying to put in a boat at every possible entry point into our neighborhood, but the street had become such a raging river that there was no way they'd be able to get to us. At that point, Aaron and I suddenly began to feel absolutely helpless, and that getting out of the house might not be possible. 
After what felt like hours, we got word that a neighbor's boat was on the way. We would later find out that the original boat was not starting, so they had to find another boat. The next boat was having some trouble as well, then miraculously started, but was immediately thrown into a tree across from our house as soon as it was put in the water. Somehow they gunned it across the street (now river), and were able to get to our front door, docking at our roofline.
We had packed a tiny cosmetic bag with the few things we thought we needed to take with us: our car keys, our drivers licenses and credit cards, prescription medications and phones. We prepped the kids as to how we were going to get on the boat. Watson began questioning why this was happening (not in a scared way, but in a very inquisitive way) and Emory quickly answered him with, 'It's okay Watson. Sometimes God challenges us.' I think that was the first time I teared up at all, not just because of the maturity of the answer, but the conviction with which she said it.
I stayed at the top of the bedroom stairs with the kids as Aaron and another neighbor carried them, one and a time, through the, now chest-high waters of the house, out of the front door and put them on the boat. When the kids were safely out, Aaron came back and walked me out. Stepping into the cold, muddy water was literally breath-taking. In the few feet between stepping out of the front door and being lifted onto the boat, the force of the water was incredible. The comfort of finally being 'safe' on the boat suddenly felt so risky, yet it was our only option. Aaron was able to shut the front door, which stopped our belongings from continuing to float away as we watched with no way to retrieve them.
It took a few minutes to carefully back the boat away from the house, decipher where the water-covered mailboxes and streets signs were to avoid hitting them, then gun it back across the street to dry ground, ducking to make it unscathed under the bottom branches of what is normally a very tall tree.
The relief of getting all six of us off of the boat and safely into a neighbors dry house was overwhelming, and the next hour or so was a blur of getting everyone into dry clothes and settled until we could assess what in the world had just happened.
We let our families know we were safe and got the kids fed and busy playing with their friends. Aaron and I had two seconds to ourselves for the first time all morning and I lost it. We were pretty sure we just lost our entire home and everything in it. What kind of flood coverage did we have? We were required to have flood insurance because our property lies in a flood zone, but it's such a improbable situation that we hadn't really even been aware of what our insurance entailed. I was overwhelmed with the magnitude of it all, exhausted by having been up for so long and emotionally drained from the trying to comprehend what this meant for us. I cried and cried and cried. I read, and tried to respond to, the barrage of texts that were coming in from friends and family checking on us. I was simultaneously comforted by the immediate outpouring of love and terrified of the reality.
I tried to lay down and sleep for a bit with Anna West, but the constant buzz of FEMA and rescue helicopters was less than relaxing.
After a few hours, my dad was able to get to us and we headed to my parent's house.
We left our home and neighborhood without any of our belongings. Our house and all of it's contents were submerged in flood water. The cars were nowhere in sight, believed to have floated away. I was thankful for our safety, but freaked out that we may have just lost everything we owned. Most of it was just 'stuff', but some of that 'stuff' had a lot of meaning or was completely irreplaceable.
Looking back, I was existing solely on adrenalin and wouldn't be able to get any real sleep for a few days.
Not too long before, Aaron and I were chatting and it somehow came up that we had never really been through something overly challenging as a couple. We were talking about how lucky we were in that regard, and sort of wondering what and when that first real 'challenge' would be. Just weeks later he looked at me and said, 'I think this is it.'
No comments:
Post a Comment