Flooded, lessons learned

[JohnTRourke]

1. Just because you are prepared, doesn’t mean you can prepare for everything. There simply isn’t enough time and money to do everything, so you prioritize based upon what you believe to be reasonable threats. I don’t live in a flood plain, I specifically researched that when I bought the place, and the river is a ¼ mile to the south and has never crossed the railroad tracks between the river and my house in the entire history of the town. My house is probably 15 feet higher than the river at its normal flow. Didn’t matter.
2. Watch your six. The river didn’t get us, it came from behind us and uphill. (the top of the street (north) is easily another 10 to 15 feet higher than me, yet the water came from above us and it came as a wall. My detached garage sits lower than the house, the river was raging and I thought it might go over the RR tracks and start backing up into the garage. A friend showed up to help me pack and said “hey, the water is coming over the ditch (to our west) and I knew we were screwed. Within 20 minutes there was a two foot river rolling across our road, west to east. I yelled at my neighbors to get out and wailed on the air horn driving out, but at least one neighbor never saw it coming and had to walk out in 2 feet of raging water.
3. You can plan to bug in all you want (and most situations I do), but you cant’ compete with a wall of water, you’re getting out, you better get ready.
4. Don’t futz about. If you think it’s getting bad, it’s getting bad and it’s time to go or make preparations to go. I was lucky, I saw the water getting high on the other side of the RR tracks and called the wife and told her to get home. It took her two hours and it’s normally a 20 minute drive. Within an hour after her getting home, all the ways north to south were closed. Some of those bridges no longer exist now. Items/people/stores on the other side of the river from us might have well have been on the moon. I was the only person on my block to pack anything. I was packing the garage (tools, ammo, etc), but I still futzed about and stopped to look at the river a couple times. If it’s time to go, it’s time to go. One neighbor lost two classic cars he had restored because he moved his RV then went to look at the river, got stuck in traffic and by the time he got back, there was 2’ of water across the road.
5. Update your 72 hour bags. Yeah, we had them, yeah they made it, but lot of my wife’s medication was different, and that’s a serious problem when no one can move around or get to work and the whole prescription thing is a damn disaster anyway.
6. Need more flashlights and batteries. Can’t have enough. Most of the town’s power stayed on and it hit us during the day. It would have been much much worse if it had hit at night. More light.
7. Get the pets first. By the time the water really started coming at us, we were just grabbing expensive stuff and tossing it in cars/RV’s and the pets can sense the fear and the cats went into hiding. Grab them first, chuck them in carriers/cars/whatever and they are handled and done.
8. Have enough drivers for the cars. Luckily a friend coming to help out brought his nephew. A 20 year old who I had not met but 20 minutes before, handed him the keys to my truck and said “drive out, be careful”. He said later he was scared. He wasn’t the only one.
9. Make sure your bug out vehicle is loaded and ready to go. I was lucky, I had spent all day two days before getting the RV ready for a hunting trip (ruined by flood), so it was full of water and everything worked. More importantly I moved it first, and it takes forever to get air in, get the jacks up, unplugged, etc. I’m still living in that RV and I’m happy to have it.
10. New cars suck. Neighbor to the south left after us, new Volvo made it about 300 feet til it went “click”. Total loss, luckily the husband had a big truck and had to come back and get his wife. They lost another newer mini-van. Neighbor to the north that had to walk out his cars were in garage and flooded. Mini-van dead, newer little car dead. Mid 80’s chevy pickup truck, flooded to 3’ tall, changed oil and fluids, still runs fine.
11. Don’t store stuff in your crawl space. It all falls apart and gets flooded and the remains of the boxes plug up the pump.
12. Don’t put your safe/ammo in the basement. Didn’t happen to me, but the list is endless of people’s guns and ammo ruined (or almost) by being stuck in the basement.
13. Government is zero fucking help. No warning, no cars with loudspeakers, they didn’t even set off the emergency sirens. (I don’t live on the edge of town, 100’s of people had gotten hit by the time it got to me). All the statist policemen are busy guarding the way after you have already gotten out with nasty armed attitudes. (seriously, you know who you are). Most policemen were pretty cool, but some ruin it for all. My neighbor was out of town; I was calling her and telling her to have her friends come get her valuables and her dog. The friends came, and left the dog cuz the street was dry (see #4). An hour later it was too late. I told her I would try to get the dog if it came, but it came too fast, we barely got out at all. I told the cop at the top of the street. I told another cop later that afternoon. I told the rescue dispatcher on scene the following day. They all said it would get handled. Two days later I convinced a cop to let me walk down my street in less water than I drove out in to check on my (mostly dead) chickens. I looked in on all the neighbor’s house and what did I find? The damn dog, which I had to carry out. In jeans and boots. Government is zero fucking help and mostly a hindrance. FEMA is a fucking joke.
14. Join a church. I do not care if you are religious and I don’t care which one. Someday you are going to need help for something and church volunteers of all Christian and Jewish types did ALL the heavy lifting, organization and lots of the work for everyone around. They still are, more than 2 weeks later. My church members helped me get cleaned up. And other members tend to have things you don’t or did have but no longer do. (pumps, pressure washers, generators, whatever)
15. Have a checklist of stuff you need to get. When panic time comes you well, panic and stuff gets forgotten. Meds, important papers, money, pictures, irreplaceable stuff.
16. Emergency money. You need a lot and it probably should be in cash. The power stayed on, but if it had gone down, all the credit cards and debit cards in the world would have done zippo good. It’s easily going to cost me 15 grand or more to get back and I didn’t get hit nearly as hard as a bunch of people. It’s all uninsured. (none of us live in a flood plain). Cash is king for getting contractors too. Everyone needs a contractor, the people with cash go to the head of the line. The town to the west of me (Lyons) is uninhabitable for 2-6 months. Think about how much money that is going to burn.

[anaphylaxis]

Thanks for the write up. Sorry to hear that you took a pretty good hit, glad you were able to pull though okay.

I considered myself to be lucky to live in Colorado since many things faced by others are not usually an issue here. That lasted until one evening when homes less than a mile away were put on notice to leave if anything became worse. My thinking on how isolated I really am has changed significantly.

[hatidua]

First-person accounts like this are far more helpful and informative for the rest of us than any theoretical list of emergency preparedness suggestions.

I too found FEMA to be a sorry excuse for an "emergency management agency", federal or otherwise. FEMA puts on a good show, not so good at actually rendering help where/when most needed.

[Irving]

Thank you for taking the time to write up this post while you are in the midst of this.

[Great-Kazoo]

Hear you regarding the church thing. Windsor was assisted by "emergency" folks. The ones who were here, there and everywhere, church folks. The out of town ones came prepared, cleaning , health, beauty aids. One other thing to remember NOT ONE OF THEM had their hand out, except for a handshake / hug. They do it all from donations.

[streetglideok]

All that pretty much sums up what I've seen over the years as well. John's account is really good insight into what can really happen vs the doomsday prepper thought process. Murphy's law comes into play, and things you can't imagine happening, do happen. Granted this is being labeled in some areas as a 1000yr flood event, in which nothing was available to measure what it could do. We will likely never witness anything like that in our lifetimes again(hopefully). We all can learn from what our friends to the north endured, and are still enduring. Never expect the government to help you out. Friends, family, church members, and other volunteers are the only ones who may have your back.

[kwando]

Excellent write up! Thx for sharing, hope your life is back to semi-normal.

[pickenup]

Good info, thanks for the writeup.

If I may, I want to add that ammo cans are worth using.
I had full ammo cans sitting on the floor, and ammo that was in cardboard boxes sitting on a shelf above them. Both got completely submersed. After the flood, I sat the ammo cans on the stairs to dry. (I was afraid to open them) When they were finally dry on the outside, I scraped the mud off and opened them, and inside EVERY CAN was dry as a bone. (small things you can be thankful for) Not so with the ammo in cardboard boxes of course. Don't know if that ammo will ever work or not, haven't had time to test it. Still trying to get the muck out, and dry out the house.

Now that we finally got natural gas back, anyone have a "radiant" natural gas heater......cheap? LOL just kidding.

[Irving]

Good info, thanks for the writeup.

If I may, I want to add that ammo cans are worth using.
I had full ammo cans sitting on the floor, and ammo that was in cardboard boxes sitting on a shelf above them. Both got completely submersed. After the flood, I sat the ammo cans on the stairs to dry. (I was afraid to open them) When they were finally dry on the outside, I scraped the mud off and opened them, and inside EVERY CAN was dry as a bone. (small things you can be thankful for) Not so with the ammo in cardboard boxes of course. Don't know if that ammo will ever work or not, haven't had time to test it. Still trying to get the muck out, and dry out the house.

Now that we finally got natural gas back, anyone have a "radiant" natural gas heater......cheap? LOL just kidding.

We upgraded our natural gas range and have the old one sitting in the garage. If your range was damaged and you need something in a pinch, I'd love to get it out of my garage for a good cause. It has a microwave sized oven about the cooktop though; making it taller and more heavy. Anyone who might need it is welcome to it though.

[hghclsswhitetrsh]

Nice write up. On a side note did you find a contractor for your furnace install?