10 years ago today, Guillermo and I were living a true nightmare. Unrelenting thunderstorms, which dumped 4 inches of rain an hour in our area, ended up flooding our home with 2 inches of water in the main part of our house within a span of 3 hours. It was unreal. Here is a brief version of events of that day:
4:30am - rain starts falling incredibly hard. We're not worried, it has rained hard
before.
5:30am - it is still raining as hard as it was at 4:30am. Twinges of worry start to
be felt. We aren't sleeping anymore, that's for sure.
6:00am - it is still raining exactly as hard as it was at 4:30 and at 5:30. I am
starting to feel like maybe we should start picking things up and putting
them up higher. I ask Guillermo to help me move the computer from the "red
room" up in to Fernando's room. He tells me I'm over-reacting, but he does
it anyway. :-) Water is starting to come into our garage.
The garage is the lowest room of our house, the red room is on a higher
level, and the rest of our house is slightly higher than the red room. I
feel a sense of gratitude that we had just mailed Fernando's brand new
computer to him at Caltech just one week earlier. And I'm also thankful
that just a few weeks earlier, I had packed away all of Rebeca's dolls that
were on the floor in her closet.
6:30am - It is still raining exactly as hard as it was at 4:30. We know now that
this is not going to be good. Guillermo is working feverishly in the
garage, because the water is starting to run through it. We move a
brand-new bag of dog food up into the red room but the bottom is already
wet. The water is rising higher and it's getting scary.
7:00am - It is still raining just as hard. The water in the garage looks like a
river. I move the bag of dog food from the red room into the kitchen.
Several minutes later I look at Guillermo who is peeking in the doorway to
the garage and he notifies me that the water is now starting to come into
the red room. I can still remember the exact way I felt when I heard those
words. My heart sinks - we ARE going to flood. I lift the bag of dog food
off the kitchen floor to place it in an even higher place and as I do so,
the soggy bottom gives way, spilling dog food all over the kitchen floor.
I look at the mess all over the floor, look in disbelief at the water
starting to come into the red room and knew that I simply HAD no choice but
to spend time picking up all that dog food.
7:30am - Once that was finally done, I walked
to Rebeca's bedroom and hoped the phones were
still working. I called my mother and called Rebeca and told them what was
happening. They were in shock. I look out the windows, and our house is
totally surrounded with very deep water. I remember thinking, "We could die
today". Guillermo wades out to the backyard because he sees Moo, our dog,
swimming away from the house. He grabs him and puts him in the bed of our
pickup truck. He didn't see Clia (our other dog) anywhere, but decides to
go look for her one more time, and finds her standing on top of a pile of
boards by our back fence. He also puts her in the back of the pickup.
Then I notice wet spots popping up all over the bedroom carpet and the
living room carpet and I knew then that the water was now in the main part
our house. The water didn't come in through the front door, it came in
from underneath the house. We called the Fire Department but all they
could say (and they sounded frantic, too) was that they were trying to save
themselves!!! We and all the neighbors leave our homes, wade through the
water and meet in the street, where the water is halfway up our thighs. It
is now not raining as hard, but we had no idea at the time how high the
water was going to end up rising. Fortunately, that was the worst of it,
but the damage had been done. We got two and a half inches of water in the
main part of our house.
So, that's how it went. The city now has sirens installed that warn us of the danger of flooding. But we actually don't need them. When the level of water gets to a certain point in the ditch alongside our house, I take one of our cars and leave till the threat is gone. The sound of those sirens is very disturbing. I was talking to my brother-in-law, Charlie, on the phone one morning two weeks ago, and those sirens went off. For one second there, my heart jumped into my throat. But I looked out the window, saw that the sun was shining, there was no rain in sight and things were ok. It was just a test. I asked Charlie if he could hear those sirens over the phone and he said he could!!
This was a day we will never ever forget.
