Dripping, soaking, floating etc.

Just a few words to describe our basement. Tonight when I got home from work I was putting the baby to bed and the water softener guy was here. He yelled something to me up the stairs about water in my basement and I was like "No, we don't have water in our basement!" He told me I better come take a look. I quickly put Tony to bed and down the stairs I ran to find this.

I quickly called Todd to come home and help me figure out what we were going to do at 8 O'clock at night with all this water. I got on the phone with our insurance company first, who was happy to help me file a claim over the phone and then would have an agent call me in 24 -48 business hours. So then I called the company that dried our basement 2 years ago which cost a small fortune and if I'm not mistaken gave a lifetime guarantee of their work (I'm fairly certain I'll soon find out that doesn't mean a whole lot). Yet when I called them, all I got was an answering service that asked me to leave one message and someone would get back to me in the next 24-48 business hours. They even stated that leaving multiple messages would not get my call answered any sooner and to please leave just one. I then called several companies that are 24 hour water damage removal companies, only to get similar messages. I'm sorry but what is the point of 24 hour service if all you get is someone who answers the phone and tell me it will be 24 - 48 hours before anyone can help you.

Todd checked the sump pump and it was full and over flowing and not working at the time. At some point it had shut off, maybe over heated, who knows, but Todd was able to get it working again but there was way too much water for that pump alone, so he brought another pump from the farm to help pump out the water.

The worst part is, we don't know when all this happened because neither of us has been in the basement since Saturday. Even though we had all this rain over the weekend I never once worried about the basement flooding because we spent so much money having it fixed 2 years ago that I thought we never had to worry about it.

All my furniture down there is new within the last 2 years and lets just say it was a bit of a splurge getting it. The water came up to the wood legs on all of it, and after wiping it off, I think it will be okay, maybe just need a little refinishing of the wood, but the fabric is damp and will need to be cleaned. I don't know if you noticed in the picture the TV sits on the floor and was 4-6 inches under water. Along with the Bose stereo system, the Wii, the Sony Playstation II, and all the remote controls and guitar Hero and many DVD's and video games. Also the mini fridge is probably ruined and probably the wall cabinets. When I went to start picking up the stuff and getting it out of water I noticed that the outlet strip with all the electronics plugged into was floating under water. I was standing in water up to my ankles at the time and it sort of freaked me out. I decided Todd should unplug it, and just to be safe, I got out of the water as fast as I could and put my feet on dry ground.

I called Kim and Francie and Jason over to help with the mess and we were able to haul most of the small stuff out of the basement and put the furniture up on cement blocks. Now Todd is down there with a wet vac vacuuming up the water. He will be there all night if he tries to get it all out. We have someone supposedly calling in the morning to set up a time to come suck out what is left of the water and start the drying process. He is how it looked when we finally called it a night.

The clean up process will be a mess. The insurance situation looks grim as well, there are so many loopholes in insurance policies I don't know why we even bother having it. This is going to be an expensive little misfortune we have encountered. I just have to keep telling myself, that there are worse things that could happen, it's only stuff.