• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Flood at my house...(a photo diary)

PnyKlr

World's Tallest Midget
We had torrential rains hit my city today. To make matters worse, the storm drains in this area are old and very small. The result? Water bubbles up from the drains and floods our street when the rain comes down hard an heavy (it runs downhill from many streets). The city doesn't want to foot the bill to pay for anything, but maybe now they'll change their minds...

The beginning:
street1.jpg

Kirshbaum1.jpg

Kirshbaum2.jpg


The middle:
truck1.jpg


The end-ish:
street2.jpg


My backyard at its worst:
back1.jpg

back2.jpg
 
This is the aftermath...everything that looks green and leafy is actually my chain-link fence (well, more than one). It was covered in debris and then acted like a floodgate before falling over. One section was actually pulled out of the ground when the ground got too wet. The large picnic table (that weighs 200 lbs) was about 30 feet away. The water picked it up and hauled it off.

after1.jpg

after2.jpg

after3.jpg

after4.jpg

after5.jpg

after6.jpg


I ended up with a grill, 8 garbage cans, a spare tire, 5 pots for potting plants, a tennis racket, a pool floaty, 2 soccer balls, and a basketball in my yard (and I'm not listing the things that actually travelled through my yard).

I was lucky though. Two houses on my block had their basement windows burst from the pressure, and the yellowish house behind mine had its foundation cave in. I only got a little water in my basement...but I was very scared because my snakes are right under one of the windows that started leaking. I stuffed both of my snakes in one travel container. Sorry if that bothers any of you, but I thought brief co-habbing was better than 2 (potentially) drowned corns.
 
It was all like that, too. I didn't dare try and catch anything that was floating by...I was scared I would get swept away.

I forgot to mention the piles of pea-sized hail that were a foot tall...as well as the fact that the guy that lost part of his foundation also had his driveway FLOAT AWAY. It was rough. Cars were being swept away.
 
My place also flooded on New Years Day, so I can truly say I've been there and I know how scary it is. I am glad you are OK and your house didn't have much damage.
Did people not have time to get their vehicles to higher ground? Rescuing my truck was the first thing I did, then I waded back home and got the other important stuff up on higher shelves etc.
 
There was absolutely not enough time for people to get their cars moved. Some people went out in the middle of it and got the ones on the street moved, but they were watching the whole thing very closely. Then there were other morons who tried to drive through "the puddle" and got stranded.
 
WOW! :bang: That is really scary......I'm glad that your house wasn't damaged too badly.

Chris
 
You know what would make me feel tons better? An english bulldog shipped to me...free of charge. :grin01:

Seriously though, I feel quite lucky after seeing the few people who had it worse. Most houses ended up like mine: soaked, stinking, leveled fences, and covered with debris.
 
Wow~ the next time i think I'm having a bad day~ I'm gonna look at those pics~ and thank my lucky stars!

Glad everyone is safe now!
 
The dogs couldn't care less when the whole thing was going on, but now they are disappointed everytime I take them out to "do their business." I have to leash them (just in case...and leash laws) so they think they are going for a walk first thing in the morning, and then they are greatly disappointed when they don't get to go very far.

Hopefully we'll get the fence fixed in the next week (or when everything is dry; whichever comes first).
 
As of today, the mayor declared a "state of emergency" for our area and is asking the state for funds. Fourteen houses in my neighborhood have now been condemned because of their foundations caving.
 
Yowch! That's some rain. :awcrap:

I hope they get things fixed soon. I didn't realize you all had so much rain up there.

There's a neighborhood in nearby Evansville, Indiana that does the same. It's in a naturally low lying area and everytime there's a downpour, the antiquated sewers can't handle the load and everything backs up into people's homes. The only downside is, most places around here don't have separate storm drains and sewer drains. So when the rainfall backs things up, you get human waste in your basement. :puke01:

After several years of research and study plus some lawsuits, the city is finally getting around to fixing things. New separate storm drains, and people have to re-route their gutters to those, and everyone gets new more powerful sump pumps for their basement. So hopefully it helps them.

Luckily our house is on a hill in the country, but the remnants of Katrina last year left us with 7 inches of rain in about an hour and a half's time frame. Needless to say it uprooted a lot of trees and our road washed out in several places.
 
Holey.... wow... I used to think some of the light flooding we got around here and down in LA where I used to live was something. But that? Glad to hear that things turned out alright and that second to last pic in the first post is indeed the scariest of them all.

Jenn
 
HA! Well, the Rock River runs through the "middle" of Rockford. It actually separates what people call the "east side" and the "west side." My mother lives 3 blocks east of the river and didn't have any problems at all. I am southeast of her and live close to bypass 20 (the bypass hugs the southern edge of the city). I'm not close enough to the river for the water to affect me at all.
 
That is some scary stuff! Glad you're okay :eek1:

cornmorphs said:
thats some crazy weather,..
so glad we dont get that in the UK.. i take it no one was hurt then?

There are some severe floods documented in the UK, as well. I saw a documentary once where people were forced on to their rooftops.
 
Wow, sorry about the disaster. I'm glad you and the pets got through all right, and hope none of your friends were in the condemned houses. And no worries about the co-habbing part either.

(btw, do you have a preferred moniker? I've always thought the username suggested "Pony Killer", but that doesn't sound right.)

-Sean
 
:grin01: It does stand for "Pony Killer." Nice work on that one. I don't mind when people just write "Pny," and I think it's funny when people have read my name quickly and write "Pnky."

Pnyklr3 were the plates on my Nova...and boy did it make mustang (pony) owners mad! lol Especially when a girl could beat them off the line when they would rev their engines as an "invite". I despise it when people think their cars are fantastic just because they have Flowmasters. :grin01:

God, I miss that car...but I am sure glad I didn't have it during all of this. I would have been heart-broken!
 
Back
Top