Here in Washington we have all just survived a four-day rainstorm that was virtually biblical in proportion. For four days that felt like forty, water poured from the skies in unbelievable quantities. Plenty of it found its way into my finished basement, unfortunately.
Perhaps I was unforgivably out of touch, but I had no idea what we were in for when it began to rain last Sunday. It rained steadily all day, but not in a frightening way. I was kind of enjoying the day inside and used it to start a long-postponed sewing project. That evening we drove out to a rock concert. It was still raining, but we had seats under the band shell so we thought, "Eh, no problem!" Little did we know. It rained so hard, and the wind blew so strongly, that everyone was wet, no matter where their seats were. Even though the stage was under cover, the rain was blowing up there so hard the band members could only laugh. Leaving the parking lot that night, we were all routed in a huge detour to get back to the highway because one of the main roads into the venue was already underwater.
That night, we fell into bed and listened to the rain beating on the roof without stopping. Monday morning we went to the bottom of the stairs and splashed as we stepped down onto the carpet. Uh, oh. A dozen calls to carpet cleaners and water extractors got me nowhere, so Mark ran up to a local tool rental place and brought home an industrial sized fan and a wet/dry shop vacuum.
That’s what saved us, because the rain kept coming down in torrents all day long. Late in the day the gutters began to overflow, and that’s when our goose was really cooked. Because our roof has no eaves, the water that overflowed the gutters ran straight down along the wall and wound up seeping quickly into our lower level. By this time we already had the carpet and padding pulled up away from the wall with the seepage problem, but we were forced to vacuum continuously in a frantic effort to keep it from spreading throughout the entire lower level. That night we swabbed and vacuumed the water for six hours without stopping until well after midnight. We ate in shifts, and were only able to do that because of the kindness of a precious friend who brought us food.
If there’s anything more ominous and more inexorable than rising water, I don’t know what it is. It’s a completely impersonal force, which may be what makes it feel so frightening. You can’t bargain with it, you can’t avoid it, you can only react as best you can. By midnight Tuesday, we had had more than twelve inches of rain in less than a week. That’s one third of our normal yearly total. But we were lucky. We’re not sure yet whether the carpet will be salvageable, but our furniture and everything else is okay. Others in the area have lost their homes, their possessions, even their lives. Several hundred people are still evacuated as I write this, with officials watching a seeping dam just north of here.
So we’re thanking our lucky stars. The weathermen have assured us that what the Washington area has just suffered through was a three-hundred year event. Hopefully that means we won’t face water like that again in my lifetime!
And we’re thinking about buying a wet vac, just in case.
