Flood, Part 2, September 2013

Over the next weeks, our community spent endless hours cleaning up and digging out.  Here is a collection of some of the pictures I took.

Mike digging a trench so the water would go away from the house.

Several of our close neighbor's basements looked like this after a few days of serious demolition.  They lost all the contents of the basement except what they had time to move upstairs beforehand and their basement were completely demoed down to the studs.  They lost their furnaces and their a/c units.  They had to be rewired and re-plumbed in many cases.

The incredible Sister missionaries were right in there!

Looking so much better!  Next step was power washing all of the remaining mud out!  This was one of our neighbor's basements.

Helping another neighbor in an assembly line removing contents of their basement through the window.

The city arrived on Sunday afternoon with pumps and equipment to blow out our storm drain which had become backed up with mud.  I love my pretty little roses, still blooming beautifully after the flood!

Our dear friends, the Falks backyard.  Notice the house just to the left was untouched and the Falk's house was devastated.  People from their church and lots of youth from various high school sport's team came in large groups to help.  The Falks are Mennonites and they were impressed with the Mormons as well as their own church.  They said something like this, "The Mennonites are the first to build someone's barn, but the Mormons are the first to arrive to help in a disaster."  Both groups were awesome.  The Mormon Helping Hands soon became referred to in our neighborhood as "Susan's people" or "Susan's Army."  I guess I was in the forefront in coordinating help efforts in our neighborhood.  It felt pretty great hearing comments like that.  Mike was right along side me doing his own help in the neighborhood.  In situations like this, you quickly learn to just go and do whatever needs to be done.  You run on adrenaline mostly and at the end of the day you are spent, physically and emotionally.  It's impossible to truly describe the feelings you have unless you have experienced something like this yourself.

Mike and a couple of others were able to dig out about six inches of mud and got rid of the footprints in our yard.  He put down grass seed and we'll see in the Spring whether that did the trick or if we'll have to replant.

Working alongside the missionaries in our next door neighbors, Annette and Ernie Ball's, home.

Eric and Hannah's friend, Myles, (on the left) stopped by and we put him to work.  The smell was pretty strong and they strongly recommended wearing these masks.

Several organizations had groups making lunches throughout the cleanup.  They brought them right to our neighborhood on several occasions.

It was exhausting, but rewarding work.

We found this booklet in the Ball's basement! Boulder County Flood Protection Handbook, Jan. 2002

This beautiful single white Iris bloomed in our flower bed right after the flood.  It is to me a representation of peace and hope after the storm.

Notice how quickly things dried up.  These are some of the sandbags that were made by some of our "angel" neighbors!

This is one of my favorite pictures.  It reminds me of the "barricades" from Les Mis.  It was so sad to see this pile which would be loaded into garbage bins and hauled away just to reappear again the next day with someone else's belongings.

Not positive, but I think these boys were from the Silver Creek Cross Country Team.

Our good friend, Phil Robertson, came over several days to help out with his big green tractor!  He was a very big help in cleaning up our street!

Niwot football team maybe??

Mike made several trips over to the mall where FEMA was set up as well as several other organizations who were offering aid. He collected a lot of information that he was able to share with our neighbors that came to be very valuable to them. Our church had a table set up where people could sign up to give or get help through the "Just Serve" program.  Red Cross and Salvation Army were there giving away cleaning supplies and brooms, mops, rakes, etc.  There was tons of food and supplies for people who were in great need.  We were able to get a little help from FEMA ourselves in terms of money to help with costs.  We were also very pleased that our insurance company, State Farm, came out and gave us some financial help.  All in all, we were among the very fortunate.  Fortunate in that we had some, but not extensive damages and fortunate in that we were able to help some of our wonderful neighbors who got hit so much worse.

Our neighbor, Annette, had some lovely dolls that she had collected and thought were lost to the flood.  We had saved them and washed them off as best as we could and then our good friend, Beanne Stones took them to someone that she knew in a doll club who restored them.  It was a very tender moment when we were able to take them back to Annette and surprise her with her beautiful dolls.  She was very touched.

One one of Mike's trips to the mall, he noticed a lady who had some handmade stuffed dolls that she was giving to people.  Mike had a nice conversation with her about Annette and ended up taking two darling stuffed bunnies to Annette to cheer her up.  Annette was overwhelmed with emotion by this small, but thoughtful act of kindness.  Mike was always looking for ways to cheer up those in need of a boost!

Here are a few pictures of our home and basement.  As I have said, we were very fortunate in that our damage was relatively minimal, but it is worth showing.

Our true and faithful friend, the sump pump!

Hannah's room was hit the hardest.  It's where the sump pump is located and where all the water came in.  There was a small amount that came in through her window since it was open a crack to run the cord for the generator. (which thankfully was never needed)  We took off all the baseboards (with the help of neighbors and friends) and washed, sanded and repainted them before having them reinstalled.

Here are some pictures of our city.  I wish I had more, but I was pretty much stuck in our neighborhood during the whole thing.  This shows our creek further down by Burlington Elementary School.  The second one is the kiddie pool at Kanemoto Park.  It is literally hanging off the embankment.

This is where we love to ride our bikes.  There will be a lot of rebuilding of the city greenway bike paths.

This was one of the other neighborhoods in Longmont.  As you can see, it was hurt even worse than ours.

  

It is now January,  2014, four months after the flood.  Our neighborhood is still busy everyday with worker's vans as everyone is busy rebuilding their basements.  There were several carpet vans in the neighborhood last week which is a happy sign that they are nearing the end of construction.  It has been a stressful few months for a lot of people, but it has been a time of faith, hope and love.  We have come to know all of our neighbors and are grateful to live in a place where everyone takes care of each other.  We have felt each other's sorrows and have felt the joy that comes in knowing that relationships are far greater than any "things" that were lost.  We were so blessed in so many ways and though we would never want to relive this and hope that it really is a 1,000 year flood, we are blessed to have gone through this experience.