The Flood

I came home from work on Monday and figured I should check my basement since it had rained for three days straight. Last time it rained for 3 days, my basement was fine. When I bought this condo in November, the basement had no signs (zip, zero) of previous water damage, and the previous owner stored stuff on the floor. Still, I'm a good little homeowner, and I figured I should check.

I'm not really sure I can find the right words to describe the shock of finding 8 inches of water in my 700 sq ft basement.

You might have heard that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency on the evening of Monday, March 15th due to flooding. Love that dirty water, Boston you're my home :)

This is the only part of the basement you can see without actually stepping in the water. I probably took this one around 6:30pm, while completely hyperventilating and calling everyone I know. About an hour later, 7 people had come to my rescue, and we spent 2 hours passing buckets of water up the stairs and out the back door. Melissa brought a water pump home from Worcester, and we ran it between 10pm and 7am. Guess who got up every 2 hours to check on it.

The tent we used this summer at the Sowa Open Market is lying on it's side behind that big white blob, which is the walls of said tent. The tent weights (big bags of sand) were also submerged.

In the foreground, you can see my hangar rack lying on it's side. It held some of my dry-cleanable items: the leather coat I bought with Merry and Jake near Santa Croce, the bridesmaid dress I wore at Jen's wedding, my two suits and my two nice dresses (yes, I really only have 2)

A day or so before the flood, I moved 3 pairs of snowy-weather shoes down to the basement because, well, winter appears to be over. I was planning on donating one of the 3 pairs, but they got tossed along with A LOT of other stuff. Oh yeah, and my big beautiful stereo which I haven't found space for in the house yet.