Flood On Valentine's Day

Wednesday afternoon, the handyman rang our bell and asked if we had a storage unit in the basement (we did and it was labeled with our names and apartment number). I told him we did and he said I'd better come down to the basement.

I went downstairs to find water and sewage pipes pouring water into our storage unit. I ran upstairs to grab Michael so he could help me get everything out before anything else got damaged. The handyman turned off the water (he didn't think to turn it off until Michael asked him if he could) so we could get in and we started hauling things out. One of our extra computer monitors was filled with water. We had to throw that out. I had to unpack a few things and will need to repack them into new boxes because the old ones were destroyed.

We had another monitor in there but it didn't get wet at all. The majority of our things were in plastic totes and thankfully they didn't leak. They were soaked on the outside. We lost a few empty boxes and a shelf. Everything was lifted off of the floor and stacked on pallets but that was to protect them from the basement flooding from the floor up, not from the ceiling.

Michael helped the handyman push the water with a floor brush and a large squeegee into the sub pump while I moved the rest of the empty boxes that weren't destroyed into our garage. We moved the rest of our things into the empty storage unit next to ours. There are no water pipes going through that one, it's the same size as our old one, and the person that had it before us had placed several cinder blocks on end with a sheet of plywood on top to keep things off the floor. Our things are further from the floor now and should be safe.

The side of Michael's box of Christmas ornaments got wet. When we opened it up everything was dry on the inside. Thankfully none of his ornaments were lost. I was really worried about those things because all of our Christmas stuff is stored in the basement. All of the other Christmas things are in plastic totes.

We're now sanitizing everything that needs to be reboxed, since some of what had leaked was sewage.

It turned out that the old lady that lives below us called the office because her toilet started overflowing and wouldn't stop. She wasn't even using the bathroom and was on the other side of her apartment. She's 89 if I remember right. She told the handyman that she wasn't using the toilet when it started to overflow and that's when he ran downstairs to see what was going on.

He saw all the water gushing out of the pipes and into our storage unit and all over the floor. He then went and knocked on the doors to all of the apartments telling people to stop using their water. (IMHO it would have been easier, faster, and more reliable to just shut off the water, but I guess that's just me.)

Plumbers were called to fix the problem. Whatever the problem was, it was fixed. We never heard what was wrong. *shrugs*

The storage unit on the other side of ours (the one that was occupied) belongs to an older lady that is out of town for three months. The handyman took her storage unit door off of its hinges to get inside and pull some of her things out that would be damaged by the water. She had a square foam chair that unfolded into a bed. He left that out of her storage unit as well as a rolling table, two lamp shades, and one of her lamps. He left without returning her things to her storage unit or putting the hinges back on. The door is only hanging there by its lock. Her chair is now missing - as of the 15th. I think someone stole it.

We don't know if our landlord will reimburse us for that monitor that we lost, which was the only thing of real value that was destroyed by the flood. However, giving how cheap they are, we highly doubt they would reimburse us anything. We have not contacted them, nor have they contacted us. Michael still needs to call our renter's insurance agent and see if there's anything that can be done from their office.

I told Michael that we would never forget our first Valentine's Day together as a married couple after what had happened. We dressed up and went out to a nice dinner and spoiled ourselves a bit afterwards. At least we had a nice evening so the day wasn't a total disaster.

The day after Valentine's Day, I received half dozen roses from Michael. He was planning on having them delivered to my office but I didn't work that afternoon so he had the florist deliver them to our apartment instead.


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amber jean
in amber jean's Journal
Posted at 12:42:19 UTC