Here comes the water!

(Our personal flood story, complete with pictures, starts at Albany Park floods-- Record-breaking rains. )

I realized with horror that I could no longer hear the gurgling of rivulets of water into the drain because the drained had filled.

My husband and I looked at the drain in the laundry room, now filled to the top with water, and we knew in a second what that meant.

The water was quickly above the drain and starting to fill the laundry room. My husband's initial inclination was to bail, using a big garbage can and starting to scoop up water and throw it into the stationary tubs.

I started to grab things off of the floor and put them on the stairs. Anything low, boxes of important papers, drawers with important papers in plastic file cabinets, Paul's vintage music box that was passed down to him from his grandmother.

After about 10 minutes my husband realized that bailing was going to do no good, and he joined me in frantically grabbing as much stuff as we could as the waters started rising higher and faster above the sewer drain.

I grabbed my computer and took it upstairs. We looked at our TV/stereo system and concentrated most of our efforts there. The Dish network box was low, near the floor, and my husband started pulling cables and wires. We got it out; the first AV piece up the stairs. The DVD player, the relatively new Yamaha receiver, amplifiers and other stuff, we somehow got out and up the stairs. We let the wires behind, figuring they were replaceable.

The big TV was on a stand, so we didn't take it at first, but then we realized that the water was rising fast... so somehow we struggled with the 50 inch TV and got it up the stairs, sitting it in the kitchen... where it still sits now.

One of our computers was on a little table. No, my husband said, let's not get it yet; the water is not that high. We were struggling with one of the big heavy Polk speakers, and the darned thing slipped out of our grasp and hit the water, knocking over the table with the computer at the same time. That computer... with all of our vacation pictures on it... was gone. We watched it sink.

The big Polk speaker, one of my presents to my husband back in 2004, was in the water. We got the other Polk speaker upstairs. Not sure what good one Polk speaker will do.

Sometime in there we heard a hissing. We realized with horror that the water had reached the level of the electrical outlets. "Pull the main!" my husband yelled, as I was closer to the circuit breaker box. So I walked over to it, pulled the breaker, and everything went dark. We continued to work with flashlights.

We did pull all of the posters and paintings off the wall as we didn't know how high the water was going to go.

The stereo stack was empty, the big TV was upstairs, the bathroom TV was upstairs. My husband had grabbed his clothes and they were upstairs. The water was continuing to rise; we were in water to our thighs by this time and it was just time to stop.

My husband wanted to save our bedroom TV, an older model Proscan that he loved and had had for 10 years. But it was heavy, heavier than the big Sony that we had somehow managed to drag up the stairs. My husband somehow managed to put it up on his dresser, but I dissuaded him from trying to move it up the steps with his bad neck. It wasn't worth another spinal surgery. Fortunately, he agreed, and that was the end of that.

So that was that. The end of our lovely family room/bedroom that was such a refuge for us. It was under water, the comfortable leather sofa, my husband's leather chair that he'd had for so many years, the water bed was starting to float. I grabbed the comforter and some of our pillows off of the bed at the last minute.

I took a last look around... the water heater and the furnace were sitting in about three feet of water by that time. The bathtub and the toilet were sitting in three feet of water. The washer and dryer were in three feet of water. My beautiful old teak dresser was taking on more water.

We went upstairs, hoping the waters would not follow us up the stairs. It was 4:30 in the morning and neither of us could think, much less walk or talk.

We closed the door to the basement and collapsed onto the couch.

Next part of the story: Shock after the Flood.

Our living room with all of the stuff that we "saved":





Next part of the story: Shock after the flood.