Man The Life Boats!

It rained yesterday...and rained, and rained, and rained. Here in the Southcoast region of Massachusetts we got a storm system from the west that converged with the remnants of tropical storm Danny. It dumped a LOT of rain overnight Friday and ALL DAY Saturday.

I was dumb enough to get out in all the rain yesterday afternoon and go to the grocery store. My sweetie called me while I was on my wet little jaunt to make sure I was OK. We were under flood warnings...and I did have to cross a couple of partially flooded streets to get to my destination and back again.

During this phone call, sweetie said he'd been down in the basement to see if there was water coming in to a place that's prone to leakage when it rains a lot. At that particular time he said it was damp, which is normal. It all checked out OK and he went on his merry way.

An hour later when I got home and dried out some, I went to the basement to get a load of wash from the dryer. At the top of the stairs I flipped the light on and started to take a step but STOPPED! dead. in. my. tracks. - for lo and behold, at the bottom of the stairs was water. LOTS of water. I hollered to sweetie to COME HERE NOW!!! We both ventured down to find the whole basement with about 2 inches of water...and the sump pump in the frech drain WAS NOT WORKING!!

Nearest we could figure after about 20 minutes of investigating was that the city storm drain system was flooded to the point of backing up into our property and caused the french drain to clog and the sump pump couldn't function. All this happened in about 90 minutes time - from the time he'd been down to check just prior to the phone call until the grim discovery at the top of the stairs just minutes later.


Sweetie did some digging into the drain and surmised that the valve inside had slammed shut from all the water. He fixed it and got it to working again. It was slow to drain, but it WAS draining! He got the shop vac and started to clean up. I got the big push broom and was pulling water away from the washer and dryer. We did this periodically all evening and he worked some into the night. This morning it was mostly dry save for a big area rug that's in front of the washer and dryer. It's gonna have to be thrown out. The de-humidifier has been working over time for sure.

All the while when were cleaning up I kept thinking "where's the the rubber duckies and the little toy boats when you need them?" It was a little kids paradise for sure!

In all the commotion of trying to figure where the water was coming from and the subsequent clean up, I didn't think to take pictures of our first flood. Maybe next time....and I'm sure there will be a next time. It's just part of life here.

So goes the life of living on the coast in southern New England. But I wouldn't have it any other way!!