Hurricane Irene

Saturday was supposed to be a work day... we had it all planned... then Hurricane Irene decided to grace us with her presence. Thanks, but no thanks. That chick is messy! So, we prepared for the storm as much as possible- removing items from the yard and making sure everything is as sturdy as possible. We decided not to board up the windows because we'd have to buy out the lumber yard to cover 30 windows. Besides, we were thinking that the western part of the area wouldn't get much. Boy, were we wrong!

The tree that landed on the neighbors

We hunkered down at the house in Suffolk and prayed for the best. The lights flickered some and we had a few large limbs come down but nothing major. We thought we were in the clear.... until about 10 am when the contractor called us (he lives close and was nice enough to go check on the house)..... There were no trees on our house, but one of our trees landed on the neighbors roof.... My heart sunk. It was one of my worst fears- that one of our trees would hit our house or a neighbors'. We know we have several to take down, but unbelievably the one that fell, wasn't on that list.  It was perfectly healthy, but down it went... straight into the neighbors living room. Thank God no one was hurt.

We quickly gathered our things and headed to the house. It took longer than normal as we had to detour a lot due to trees blocking off the regular route. As we got to the house, we noticed the neighbor standing out front, so we parked and went to talk to him. The tree man was there cutting up the tree and getting everything straight. Amazingly, they never lost power, even though the tree took the line down to the ground. They assured us that they were ok and that they would get it fixed. The tree landed on their roof at the living room and broke the rafters. The neighbors joked that it allowed them to get a new living room. I'm glad they are being optimistic, as I nearly had a heart attack. Apparently, several trees in the neighborhood came down on houses, but it didn't look like too much damage was done. Although, the area was hit very hard.

Fallen trees

So, after talking to the neighbors and being assured that everything was fine, we went to check out the house.... sure enough, we had some trees down too. Thankfully, they're not near the house. A pine and some other kind of holly-looking tree. They could wait... so we headed inside to see if any windows had broken. Amazingly, none had. Then, we went to the basement.... where we had an indoor swimming pool!

Indoor swimming pool. Also known as the flooded basement.

Even though the power was still on in the house, for some reason, the sump pump decided not to work. We had nearly a foot of water in the basement. After messing with the sump pump, we got it to start pumping the water out. So, I walked out the where the pipe goes out of the basement to make sure everything was pumping ok...it was a geyser! Something was wrong with the pipe and water was spraying everywhere! We quickly turned the pump off. After some reviewing of the pipe we thought we had the issue fixed and tried it again... now water was bubbling up from the ground (we have dry wells that the pipe and gutter downspouts go to. We think they need to be cleaned though). So, we shut it down again. I saw some PVC in the basement and figured we could disconnect the pipe to the dry well and just run the water into the yard. One way or another the water had to go! Well, it worked.... So, then Fred sees what looks like a small spring coming down one of the walls in the basement- but it's an interior wall, so he climbs into the crawl space to discover 8 inches of water in there!! After a trip to Lowe's to get a pump, Fred and his dad hooked it up to pump the water from the crawl space to the well in the basement, to be sucked out by the sump pump. It was proving to be a long process, so we decided to head home and Fred's dad would come back to check the water and turn off the pump. When he returned, the sump pump wasn't working- again, so water was filling up the well. We decided we'd look at it the next day.

When we arrived today, the crawl space had a lot less water than the night before, but the basement had about 2 inches of water in it. And of course, it was raining again. So, Fred and his dad disassembled the sump pump and cleaned it out. Then, they got a new connector to the pipe since the old one was split. After reassembling everything the sump pump seemed to work again, so we were able to pump out the rest of the water in just a few minutes... one crises down.

Break time from cutting trees and removing debris

Then, we went outside to tackle the downed trees. Man, were they a mess! Fred's dad started sawing them down so we could move limbs to the street for the city to pick up... In the midst of limbs and leaves and poison ivy, we trekked back and forth, limb by limb. We're still not done. We did manage to make a dent in the tree debris... maybe we'll finish it off this up-coming weekend. I'm all for letting nature do it's thing and leaving them there to compost. I figured if God can take them down, he can clean them up too. The worst part about it is none of the trees we need to take down came down... so, we have to clean up these and cut down more... grrrr, Irene knocked us down, but we're coming up swinging! And if that doesn't work, I'll get my raft and float around in the basement.

Blackwater River nearly to the top of the boat ramp

One issue we have to consider is that the Blackwater River is expected to flood again. It's not supposed to be as bad as Hurricane Floyd, but it could potentially flood downtown. We're not in the flood zone, but the company doing the kitchen is.... hopefully the cabinets aren't there, or they've moved everything to higher ground. We hope it doesn't flood and the latest figures show it cresting at 18 ft, but with the additional rain, anything is possible.

In other news on the house... the trim is up for the bathroom door frame and laundry room, which we now get to scrape and paint :-/. Hopefully, there won't be any more surprises in store weather-wise, so we can actually get some work done on the house instead of clean-up. Now that the storm is over, I want to tell Irene to stick it where the sun don't shine for dumping a foot of rain on the house and taking down perfectly good trees, but instead, I'm thankful it wasn't worse.