My parents… were hit HARD by the most recent flood. The good thing is they were hit in 2014 too, and EVERYTHING valuable was moved out of the basement into the ground floor. Their basement, with two sump pumps, held out with no more than 8 inches of water.
This is a shot they took of the middle of it – the house was surrounded with no way out. This image is actually of a 7 food deep dry gulch with bridge… of which you can barely see the top railing. Composter is visible to the right of the porch rail. It’s a good two feet deep against the side of the house.
The aftermath left a TON of debris. Composter is at the top of the image:
Just… SO Much debris:
A shot further down the driveway:
The bridge was badly damaged, under cut at the edges, and the railing caught a lot of debris. Mom said that when the water was hitting where the debris was caught it was sending huge spumes of water into the air.
A closer look at the undercutting:
That’s a good 10 foot drop from the top of the undercut to the bottom. Their garage got a fair amount of water, but both cars were retrieved safely.
And just SO MUCH MUD. Walking was hard, and dad had to dig it out to close the garage door.
It’s crazy how much water went through here! I’m glad they’re safe and the puppers are safe, and I’m glad they were able to save both cars because replacing one would be an unnecessary hardship.
But just take a look at that first photos again:
Wow.
Were you hit by the flooding? Do you know people who were? It hit a broad area, including part of Iowa and Southeastern Minnesota. Inquiring minds want to know!
It’s hard to see but the water left behind over 8 inches of mud and debris behind. The water came up the first steps of the decks surrounding the house, 2 feet. Everywhere you looked it was water. The downstream railing for the bridge caught some debris and the water was shooting up and over the top rail of the bridge. 2 feet of water on the road. These pictures during the flood were taken after the water started to go down. We had 4 inches of rain the day before and estimates of 6-10+ additional inches of rain in our area. Our garage almost got washed away. My car was inside. The last flood in 2013 was almost as bad and the water rose higher for a shorter amount of time. Then you have to wait for the mud to dry out so you can get it scraped away or the vehicle doing the scraping will get stuck. We lost all of our flower beds except for one in the backyard next to the hill. Still pumping over 3,000 gallons an hour from the basement to try to stay ahead of the water coming into the basement still today. We have over 2 1/2 miles of drainage in the valley behind our house. This will take months to clean up.
That’s what you have kids for, right? 😉
That’s so awful! I’m so sorry to see how much damage they got!
It’s so crazy, and it’s going to take months to clean up. :/